HomeLab SSD Life Expentancy

[Andrei Egi]

Hello, I couldn't find a definitive answer for this question. On a home lab environment, where I run ProxMox 5 and a few VM's (Debian, OpenMediaVault and Windows Server 2016) can I use a consumer ssd (Kingston a400 480gb, 160 TBW) for both ProxMox installation and VM's or shoud I install Proxmox and most of the VM's on a hdd and use ssd only for the VM's that need faster speeds (like Windows Server 2016)?
I had read that ProxMox (an also Debian) writes a lot to data on the installation drive and I'm worried about the ssd life.
Thank you

 

[guletz]

Hi,

The best you can is to have also some hdd. You can install OS on ssd, but after you finish the install you need to move or better to make symlinks from ssd folders to hdd (/tmp, /var/tmp,/var/log and others). Also the swap can be on HDD. In this situation you will reduced the ssd write operations.

 

[wolfgang]

Hi,

If you use actual SSD you will have no problem with the duration.
A normal consumer SSD can handle min one write per Day over 3 Years.

But what makes sense is enable in the mount option discard.
See for more information
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_state_drive

Anyway, it is not good either to do not write on an SSD because NAND also age when they are not used.

 

[Andrei Egi]

Hello, thank you both