Drive Configuration Suggestions

[adzam]

I am in the process of purchasing a new (used) server for my home lab. I plan on running Proxmox on it and am wondering what the best drive configuration would be.

Should I run the host on RAID 1 and VM's on RAID 5 or 10 or just do one array for everything?

Or would you suggest a different configuration all together?

Also, if I run the host on RAID 1 would 73GB drives suffice or should I go larger?

I am trying to plan out how many drives to buy and make sure the server I am looking at has enough bays to fit my needs.

Thanks in advance for any input!

 

[LnxBil]

Should I run the host on RAID 1 and VM's on RAID 5 or 10 or just do one array for everything?

Depends on the number of drives. a RAID-5 on e.g. 7 disks is faster than a RAID-5 von 5 disks (assuming all the same disks).

Also, if I run the host on RAID 1 would 73GB drives suffice or should I go larger?

Proxmox VE needs at least 8 GB to install with the default installer (last time I checked), so you have plenty of free space.

If you buy all used 72 or 146 GB drives, how many could you use? If you're looking for 72 GB drives, the server is really old, isn't it? Most drives I got in my DL360G5 are already 146 GB.

 

[adzam]

Depends on the number of drives. a RAID-5 on e.g. 7 disks is faster than a RAID-5 von 5 disks (assuming all the same disks).



Proxmox VE needs at least 8 GB to install with the default installer (last time I checked), so you have plenty of free space.

If you buy all used 72 or 146 GB drives, how many could you use? If you're looking for 72 GB drives, the server is really old, isn't it? Most drives I got in my DL360G5 are already 146 GB.

Thank you for your reply!

I plan on getting a Dell R710 with 2 hex core Xeon X5650, X5660, or X5670 processors and 48GB of RAM. The R710 is available with 4 or 6 x 3.5" bays or 8 x 2.5" bays. I would rather have the 8 bays, but so far the best deal I found is on the 6 bay version with X5660's.

I was only considering the 72GB drives if I separated Proxmox and VM storage. If I go with 3.5" I found a great deal on 2TB drives, but 5 or 6 of them is still more than I would like to spend right now so I may end up with 300GB drives.

So if I get a R710 with 6 bays is it worh using 2 bays for an array just for Proxmox? Will I see any performance benefit of having Proxmox on a RAID 1 array or am I better off just using a single drive and a 5 drive array for storage?

Thanks again!

 

[LnxBil]

I was only considering the 72GB drives if I separated Proxmox and VM storage. If I go with 3.5" I found a great deal on 2TB drives, but 5 or 6 of them is still more than I would like to spend right now so I may end up with 300GB drives.

Normally, the 300 GB drives are SAS with 10k, your 2 TB drives are slow NL-SAS or even SATA drives, which do not perform well compared to the 300GB SAS@10k. Depending on your space needs, I'd always suggest to use SAS 10k or 15k for local storage if you do not want to (or can affort) SSD (also preferable SAS instead of SATA).

So if I get a R710 with 6 bays is it worh using 2 bays for an array just for Proxmox? Will I see any performance benefit of having Proxmox on a RAID 1 array or am I better off just using a single drive and a 5 drive array for storage?

You will have the best performance by putting 6 drives in a RAID10 and put everything on the disks.

I'd never separate the OS from the data if you do not plan to reinstall via the installer, because you have to overwrite any data. If you're familiar with PVE or Linux, it should not be problem for you, but I still want to point it out.

 

[adzam]

Normally, the 300 GB drives are SAS with 10k, your 2 TB drives are slow NL-SAS or even SATA drives, which do not perform well compared to the 300GB SAS@10k. Depending on your space needs, I'd always suggest to use SAS 10k or 15k for local storage if you do not want to (or can affort) SSD (also preferable SAS instead of SATA).

The 300GB drives I was considering are SAS 15k, 3Gb/s. The 2TB drives are Seagate Constellation ES SAS 7200RPM for $39 each. I also just came across a lot of Hitachi 600GB SAS 15k, 6Gb/s drives. I may end up going with the Hitachi's since they are the cheapest.

One of my VM's will be a Plex media server so space is important. I currently have all my media on a Seagate Personal Cloud NAS so I will keep that until I can afford an external array or another box to use for NAS.

You will have the best performance by putting 6 drives in a RAID10 and put everything on the disks.

I'd never separate the OS from the data if you do not plan to reinstall via the installer, because you have to overwrite any data. If you're familiar with PVE or Linux, it should not be problem for you, but I still want to point it out.

RAID 10 it is! I have been running Debian on various servers for years, so I am definitely familiar with Linux. PVE on the other hand is new to me. I recently installed it on a VirtualBox VM to get a feel for it before deploying it on my server. Obviously I can't do much with it within a VM, but I just wanted to see what the configuration was like.

Thanks again for all your help!

 

[LnxBil]

The 300GB drives I was considering are SAS 15k, 3Gb/s. The 2TB drives are Seagate Constellation ES SAS 7200RPM for $39 each. I also just came across a lot of Hitachi 600GB SAS 15k, 6Gb/s drives. I may end up going with the Hitachi's since they are the cheapest.

One of my VM's will be a Plex media server so space is important. I currently have all my media on a Seagate Personal Cloud NAS so I will keep that until I can afford an external array or another box to use for NAS.

1,8 TB of space (6x600GB) is something to start with and server grade performance.

If you're not that power hungry, just buy the bigger and slower drives. I'm running also with 4x 2TB on ZFS (raidz, so RAID-5 like) without any problems. Yes, they're not that fast but for multimedia I have no problem saturating my GBit network. The machines runes fine and there is no server grade hardware involved. I also run a PVE instance on a laptop (SSD and SSHD disk), so whatever throughput you need, there is always something you can do.

RAID 10 it is! I have been running Debian on various servers for years, so I am definitely familiar with Linux. PVE on the other hand is new to me. I recently installed it on a VirtualBox VM to get a feel for it before deploying it on my server. Obviously I can't do much with it within a VM, but I just wanted to see what the configuration was like.

If you're used to Debian, then you're going to no problem with PVE if a "deeper" Linux related problems arises. As long as you can boot a rescue system, you can always resurrect some software misconfiguration.