cultural question : PVE Host HardWare recommendations

[OliveLandive]

Hello guys !

Here's my first thread around here and let's say it directly I am very excited about ProxMox, it is an awesome VE platform.

Let's get straight to the topic : I am thinking about moving my VDI part on ProxMox and I am posting cause I need some advice about the hardware that supports ProxMox VE on it. (regarding the fact that some of the most well known company like HP or so are providing Hyperconverged solution for VmWare / HyperV so far but sadly not KVM / ProxMox yet).

I'm fancy buying a hyperconverged hardware servers or anything else that rocks but I'm actually struggling getting any feedback with ProxMox working on that kind of hardware, you guys can provide any ideas about this topic ? what kind of hardware are you using in your company ? Feel free to give your opinion !

Thanks a lot for all your answers in advance,

 

[samontetro]

Small HA cluster for a public research team:

2 nodes DELL R530 with

• 2 E5-2603 (6 cores)
• 32GB RAM
  
• 2 x 300GB 15Krpm drives for proxmox, Raid1 (PERC H730)
  
• 2 x 8TB drives as osd for CEPH
• 2 x ethernet 10G (one is dedicated to ceph)

1 node DELL R530 with

• 2 E5-2603 (6 cores)
• 32GB RAM
  
• 2 x 300GB 15Krpm drives for proxmox, Raid1 (PERC H730)
  
• 2 x 8TB drives as osd for CEPH
• 4 x 8TB drives, RAID5 (PERC H730) to store backup datas (for users)
  
• 2 x ethernet 10G (one is dedicated to ceph)

Latest node is located in a different building but with ethernet 10G connectivity.

this cluster provides few Vms (dhcp, dns, ldap, home directories storage via NFS, git, owncloud, BackupPC,OpenMeetings, frontend for a large cluster). backupPC VM is not in HA and runs only on the third server. VMs in HA mode are mainly on the 2 other nodes.

Patrick

 

[OliveLandive]

Cheers a lot for your reply Patrick !

Seems like a decent setup, any experience with VDI on that kind of infra ?

 

[samontetro]

Not really... a short test with a windows VM and solidworks /solidedge software. Without using a GPU (not enought time to set up). With Krdc it was running but no so fast as on a local desktop with a local GPU of course. But for our small need it was good enought and the test was positive.
I'm using remote desktop from linux/mac to linux with TigerVNC, but from laptop to large graphics server, not on this cluster. The goal of this cluster is to provide vital tools for our daily work. All that should never stop! And for these last 2 years it never stops running with proxmox!

 

[OliveLandive]

Not really... a short test with a windows VM and solidworks /solidedge software. Without using a GPU (not enought time to set up). With Krdc it was running but no so fast as on a local desktop with a local GPU of course. But for our small need it was good enought and the test was positive.
I'm using remote desktop from linux/mac to linux with TigerVNC, but from laptop to large graphics server, not on this cluster. The goal of this cluster is to provide vital tools for our daily work. All that should never stop! And for these last 2 years it never stops running with proxmox!

Thanks a lot for your answers !
Been through some VDI tests as well, win 10 / GPU passthrough (radeon HD 7770) and the experience was really smooth and satisfying, my clients were using thinclients 200 miles away with RDP so I am fully optimistic regarding that solution. I am currently struggling cause VirtIO drivers for the HDD with win7 does not seems to work well (BSOD @ the boot) but shouldn t be a problem for long.