Drive with data, independent of VMs

[MichalTill]

Hello,

My usecase has 2TB of data (downloaded from the internet, no iso image to start with) that my VM uses. This data would not change a lot. Since I am learning Proxmox and experiment with VM configuration a lot, I would like the disk with this data to persist independent of VMs so I can freelly attach and remove it from the VM. EDIT: I mean only one VM at one time.

All the configuration and commands I can find only treat disks as part of a VM, not independent. How do I achieve my scenario?

Also I can possibly do it in a pass-trough way, where I would have my data on external, independently formatted drive, without using Proxmox's storage facilities.

If you know, I would like to understand both possibilities and how to achieve them.

Regards,
Michal

 

[sw-omit]

By default the disk can only be used by one system at a time, BUT you can (from the GUI) select the change owner option to move it to a different system.
Alternatively you could attach it to one Server/VM, and then share it to others through either SMB/CIFS, NFS or some other method. That VM wouldn't need many resources probably, just enough to run and host the disk for you on the local network.

 

[MichalTill]

By default the disk can only be used by one system at a time

But can the disk be created and "attached" to zero systems? (VM)

 

[_gabriel]

yes, only from CLI / Shell : https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Passth.../Add_physical_device_as_new_virtual_SCSI_disk

 

[louie1961]

I would spin up a linux instance with NFS and then you can make that disk available to any and all VM's as an NFS share. You could do it with a simple Linux VM or download something like OpenMediaVault, which will also do it for you and its pretty lightweight with a decent web interface.

 

[sw-omit]

But can the disk be created and "attached" to zero systems? (VM)

Or sort-off from the GUI:
If you create/add a disk to a VM, one of the options that disk has is to detach it, then it is on the drive as an "unsused disk", although it is still referenced to that VM (think of it as being "in the VM's install folder").
It's not in use, and can be moved freely to other VM's (/"folders"), and if you remove the VM, if you don't check the "remove unreferenced disks" option, it should not remove the drive (still safer to move the drive to a different VM beforehand though)