Best practice: local storage for VMs on hardware raid

[His.Dudeness]

Hi,

I am planning to set up a new proxmox VE on a stand alone HPE DL380 Gen9 that has a Smart-Array hardware RAID controller for storing the VMs. (no SAN or NAS storage)

I know I could set the controller to HBA mode, but I’d like to use the hardware raid features for easier raid management and monitoring via iLO.

Is it a good idea to use ZFS on top of a single hardware RAID logical disk?
Or should I use (thin) LVM? Or qcow2 on XFS?

Any best practice tips for me?

cheers
Michael

 

[Dunuin]

ZFS with HW Raid will corrupt your data. Use LVM thin. And I think if you use LVM all virtual disks will be qcow2 by default.

 

[aaron]

And I think if you use LVM all virtual disks will be qcow2 by default.

If you use (thin) LVM based storage directly, guest disks will be logical volumes which are used as block devices.

Is it a good idea to use ZFS on top of a single hardware RAID logical disk?
Or should I use (thin) LVM? Or qcow2 on XFS?

As @Dunuin already mentioned, don't use ZFS on a single disk that is actually a HW raid. You rob ZFS of the capabilities to heal itself. It will also cost you performance if ZFS is working against the RAID controller.

Either format the RAID with xfs or ext4 or create a (thin) LVM. Whatever you like better.

I know I could set the controller to HBA mode, but I’d like to use the hardware raid features for easier raid management and monitoring via iLO.

I guess it comes down to what one is used . I personally definitely prefer direct disk access with a controller that is as simple and stupid as possible with ZFS on top which I can easily monitor (SMART) and mange via the running OS. All CLI tools to handle a HW RAID controller from the running OS that I encountered so far were rather abysmal to use

 

[His.Dudeness]

I guess it comes down to what one is used . I personally definitely prefer direct disk access with a controller that is as simple and stupid as possible with ZFS on top which I can easily monitor (SMART) and mange via the running OS. All CLI tools to handle a HW RAID controller from the running OS that I encountered so far were rather abysmal to use

Hi aaron!

thanks for your reply!

In my home lab I use ZFS on a small server that has only a onboard HBA. (ASRock Rack X470D4U) It works great, I am a real big ZFS fan!

But the HPE server offers the iLO Interface that can monitor the system from outside the OS and trigger email alerts. It also marks the failed disk with an orange light on the front and begins the rebuild as soon as somebody puts in a new disk.

That helps to prevent human error as there will be no IT personnel on site
The server is for the small business of a friend of mine who lives a bit further away...

So from a performance or reliability view there is no big difference between ThinLVM or qcow2 on XFS/EXT4 ?

cheers
Michael

 

[czechsys]

For simplicity in such case i am suggesting using LVM Thick as noobproof.

 

[His.Dudeness]

For simplicity in such case i am suggesting using LVM Thick as noobproof.

No snapshots if I see correctly.