Build new Proxmox system

[vinhquangth]

Hi bro,
Im going to build new proxmox system with 02 IBM x3650M5 and 01 Dell R750 (2CPU)
My topo bellow. Please teach me the best plan to my system.

Thanks all!

 

[ubu]

"Best" is very much not the same fore everyone and every usecase.

You can do a shared Storage with Ceph, but you need fast networking for this,
what kind of Networking Equipment do you have / plan to use?

10 Gbit, 25Gbit?

What kind of Disks are you planning to use, how much storage do you need, ist this a test System for yourself or a few people or are you planning with hundreds of users?

 

[vinhquangth]

"Best" is very much not the same fore everyone and every usecase.

You can do a shared Storage with Ceph, but you need fast networking for this,
what kind of Networking Equipment do you have / plan to use?

10 Gbit, 25Gbit?

What kind of Disks are you planning to use, how much storage do you need, ist this a test System for yourself or a few people or are you planning with hundreds of users?

Thanks bro,
This is my company's system (100 users) used for local data (~4TB) and not necessary to have a good network. In local, I have one server SQLserver (run on Srv1), one Fileserver to storage data, one Domain Controller.
IBM x3650M5: 2x300GB(SAS) and 4x900GB(SAS)
Dell: 2x480(SSD) and 4x2TB(SAS)

Do you have any ideas for my system?!
Thanks!

 

[ubu]

OK, performance wont be great, Install proxmox with zfs mirror and use zfs storage replication between your proxmox nodes.

Use the slowest node with the biggest drives as PBS, proxmox Backup Server.


If you want HA use all 3 nodes in a proxmox Cluster, you can manually Install PBS in your third proxmox node

 

[vinhquangth]

OK, performance wont be great, Install proxmox with zfs mirror and use zfs storage replication between your proxmox nodes.

Use the slowest node with the biggest drives as PBS, proxmox Backup Server.


If you want HA use all 3 nodes in a proxmox Cluster, you can manually Install PBS in your third proxmox node

Thanks bro,

Install proxmox with zfs mirror and use zfs storage replication between your proxmox nodes

I plan to build server (IBM, Dell) with hardware Raid (ext4). But you recommend build with zfs, its mean I dont config hardware raid and install proxmox and choose zfs(raid1), after, use zfs storage replication between server nodes. Thus, when SSD on Dell died, proxmox (Dell server) still run with zfs storage replication above. Its true?!
Im going to build Cluster on PBS and join others server. Im newbie to proxmox so I've only tested it in PVE but haven't run PBS yet. I think PBS will be the place to backup VMs from nodes and replication between nodes, etc.
I'd be happy if you could give me the details.

thank you so much!

 

[scyto]

I'd be happy if you could give me the details.

The best way to learn is to build and then re-build before you ever put any production data on it. There is a lot about proxmox that is different from things like hyper-v (or whatever you are running those windows VMs on now).

One thing intrigues me - how are you planning to get those windows VMs onto the proxmox nodes - where are the running currenlty - the DCs and the DFS servers....

I am personally of the opinion what you really want is a ceph network rather than replicated zfs, but that needs a fast network. If this is a realy work production cluster don't do this on the cheap. 10gbit network cards and switches are relatively cheap these days and if you still with ZFS it will still help iwth replication.

It took me 4 weeks of my spare time to learn to build my homelab cluster.
https://gist.github.com/scyto/76e94832927a89d977ea989da157e9dc

 

[vinhquangth]

One thing intrigues me - how are you planning to get those windows VMs onto the proxmox nodes - where are the running currenlty - the DCs and the DFS servers....

Now, I have 3 IBM x3650 run Windows Server 2012. One run Domain controller, one run Secondary domain controller, one run sqlserver 2019. I just bought a new server Dell R550. So I want to move all them to virtualization, and I choose proxmox and build with topo network above.
I dont have much experience in building system with proxmox especially hardware configuration.
I would be very grateful if anyone could lead me!

many thanks!

 

[scyto]

I would be very grateful if anyone could lead me!

check out item 9 on my gist https://gist.github.com/scyto/76e94832927a89d977ea989da157e9dc which documents indetail how i move the VMs including all my mistakes. the key is the same principles apply to a physical server too.

i migrated 3 windows vms:

1. vhdx import is possible (as such you can export physical server disks as vhdx - but i have never done such an export)
2. you will need to edit the proxmox boot EFI (see this for my test where i vlaidated it, i suggest you do the same)
3. for the love of god make sure you have both snapshot backups (if VMs) and real backups (VMs or physical) before you do anything
4. pay very close attention to the virtio install, virtual device swapping and EFI instructions when migrating

good luck, and remember test test test before you do this on an actual production server...