Beginner searches for advice regarding storage (simple solution, low power usage)

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denis_pve

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Jan 29, 2023
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Hey guys,

I'm building a simple proxmox server (at home) based on a second hand "Dell OptiPlex 5060 SFF" running an Intel i5-8500 and will be equipped with 32GB DDR4-2666 non ECC memory. So NO server hardware and I know that.

First I'd like to simply introduce what I am planing to do with the system:
  • Ubuntu Server VM running InfluxDB storing the data that is collected by my home assistant instance which is running on dedicated physical hardware
  • Ubuntu Server VM running Grafana visualizing the data
  • 1-2 playground VMs/containers doing just fun stuff that is not critical
  • Backups will be done to a NFS storage (Synology NAS for now since I already have it)
  • low power usage as possible
So in the end not really fancy stuff.

Now I got a question regarding the storage solution and its filesystem.

I got 2xSATA3 ports + 1xM.2 NVMe Gen3 and 1xPCIe-x16 slot.

I've planned to get one small NVMe card (128-256 GB) running the PVE host system + 1 or 2 SATA3 1TB SSDs internally.

Is it better to configure a ZFS storage pool (mirrored) from the two SATA3 SSDs? Or would you just go with a simple ext4 file system and one SATA3 SSD? And what about the NVMes filesystem?

Just as an addition I will not create some fancy power hungry (and yes even 30-40 watts 24/7 is power hungry for me) TrueNAS server delivering a storage pool for my PVE. I just want to get the data stored longterm locally in the PVE coming in from my smart home sensors. (no movies, photos etc)

So a pretty simple usage scenario.

I would love to hear from you what you think about it and would you can recommend me.

Thank you very much.

Denis
 
If i were in your place i would just install the ssd and have to LVMs setup for each disk as the server does not run any critical stuff, And i would make sure i backup the VMs and CTs

Also a ZFS pool would be better if you were also planning to use your setup as a NAS with many more disk. Since you do not plan for RAID it would be better to use your disks as LVMs

Cheers
 
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If you only care about power consumption or best performance and not about downtime or data integrity just get a single NVMe and use it with LVM.

Otherwise I would buy a UPS, two enterprise SATA SSDs for a ZFS mirror and skip the NVMe SSD.
 
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@Dunuin Thank you very much for your response.

Well yeah that is a good question. I already got an UPS. But yeah just for some minutes of downtime. So with NUT I'm able to shutdown the server gracefully after the UPS is empty. (and my homeassistant box etc)

Data integrity is not critical that is right. (I don't care if some sensor data is gone or not) Otherwise I would have to use server hardware, ECC memory etc.
But keeping the setup simple and affordable (in the end it is just for some fun at home) is key for me. I like your second option. When I get you right you would have e.g. 2xWD Reds setting up as a mirrored ZFS pool with different datasets (PVE installation, VMs/Containers, ISOs etc). So one SSD can fail.

Did I get you right on this?

And am I right that I can "only" backup the VMs/Containers but not the PVE host itself? (no matter if using PBS or just simply the build in backup mechanism of PVE)
 
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denis_pve said:
Data integrity is not critical that is right. (I don't care if some sensor data is gone or not) Otherwise I would have to use server hardware, ECC memory etc.
But keeping the setup simple and affordable (in the end it is just for some fun at home) is key for me. I like your second option. When I get you right you would have e.g. 2xWD Reds setting up as a mirrored ZFS pool with different datasets (PVE installation, VMs/Containers, ISOs etc). So one SSD can fail.

Did I get you right on this?
Click to expand...
WD Reds are not Enterprise SSDs and are lacking important features like better write durability and power-loss protection for ZFS. But yes, I personally would use a ZFS pool with some parity data like a mirror. That way I get the bit rot protection so my data isn't corrupting over time, I don't lose data, get no downtime, and will have less unnecessary work as I don't have to install and setup everything from scratch when a SSD fails (and it will sooner or later). And you can also use NUT with PVE so you don't lose your async writes during a power outage. ECC would be nice, because without it you can't really trust the bit rot protection of ZFS, when data already corrupts in RAM, but you already said thats not an option with your hardware.

denis_pve said:
And am I right that I can "only" backup the VMs/Containers but not the PVE host itself?
Click to expand...
Depends. There is no easy/integrated way to backup the host yet (but on the roadmap). But there is the proxmox backup client that can be used with scripts/CLI to backup any block device or folder to a PBS. So if you really want you could backup the PVE host configs on file level with or or even the whole system disk on block level when booting into a Debian on a pen drive.
 
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Thank you very much for the detailed explanation.

Have you got a recommendation of a good enterprise SSD that I could use? And yeah ECC would be nice but I can live without it. (in the end with this hardware I have to live without it)
 
Thank you very much.

@Dunuin

One last question.

For a beginner with proxmox and not thaaaat much time for fiddling with the file system.

Would you recommend a simple LVM setup with one disk plus one disk for backups (yeah plus backups transferred to the NFS storage)?

Or would you nevertheless recommend the way with a ZFS pool with one vdev in mirror mode?
 
Depends...
Are you familiar with LVM? If not and something goes wrong, fixing LVM isn't easier than fixing ZFS. For both you will have to spend some time to learn how to use and maintain it.
If you don't care about bit rot protection, you don't mind the downtime and additional work setting everything up again when a disk fails and you don't care about losing all data written/changed after the last backup, then LVM might be a valid choice too.
 
Ok got it. So I will get the PM893 and learn about ZFS. In the end if something goes wrong I'm ok with it. I do the best I can to backup the data. But the data is not THAT important so I'm ok when I lose some of it. So a good env to learn about ZFS.

Thanks for your help.
 
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