How it will be best to utilise my current hardware?

[FSNaval]

I have two servers currently running in my small home lab.
a. my primary server running OMV bare metal for file sharing and running various programs through docker
b. my backup server running OMV bare metal that acts as a backup server for the first one.
I want to repurpose my backup server. I want to install proxmox on it and through proxmox:

1. To have a VM of OMV and migrate my primary server over it (better hardware specs)
2. To have a Debian VM which will act as my everyday computer
3. To have a windows VM for my sister who refuses to follow linux
4. To deploy a better strategy for backing up the above VMs

I am attaching an image of the disks I currently have on my backup server.

I would like your advise as to the best way to utilise them on proxmox??. I am thinking of the following:

i. the small NVME to act as proxmox OS drive
ii. the large NVME to act as a share storage when I setup a second proxmox server for migration purposes
iii. the other disks to remain as data disks. However, I don't know which is the best way to utilise them. Should I pass them through to VM directly or should I format them on proxmox and let proxmox do all the work?

--> If I pass them through, I am avoiding the data transferring from primary to secondary server which takes a lot of time ( 18TB of data through GB link between the servers)
--> If I format them and let proxmox do all the work, I will have to transfer a big amount of data between the servers, gaining on performance in the long term.

What would you do ?

 

[louie1961]

If I format them and let proxmox do all the work, I will have to transfer a big amount of data between the servers, gaining on performance in the long term.

I'm confused, why do you believe formatting them and managing them trough proxmox would improve their performance? I am no expert, but I can't fathom why this would be. My first reaction was to pass them through to an OMV instance, and bundle them all together inside of OMV with LVM and mdadm, to replicate how Synology hybrid raid works with mixed disk sizes. https://kb.synology.com/en-br/DSM/tutorial/What_is_Synology_Hybrid_RAID_SHR

 

[FSNaval]

I'm confused, why do you believe formatting them and managing them trough proxmox would improve their performance? I am no expert, but I can't fathom why this would be. My first reaction was to pass them through to an OMV instance, and bundle them all together inside of OMV with LVM and mdadm, to replicate how Synology hybrid raid works with mixed disk sizes. https://kb.synology.com/en-br/DSM/tutorial/What_is_Synology_Hybrid_RAID_SHR

Thank you for your reply.

My initial thought was also to pass them through to OMV and bundle them with mergerfs

I am reading that if I format the drives in proxmox and then attach them to the VM, I will have a gain in performance (read/write) because I am adding another layer of control over the data. Maybe I am wrong here, I am just starting to experiment on proxmox.

Another thing I read is that having the disks controlled by proxmox, makes them easier to backup with PBS, if I decide to follow that route as well.

My initial thought was also to pass them through to OMV and bundle them with mergerfs

 

[FSNaval]

I have read that when you passthrough disks in proxmox, this will also prevent Virtual Machine live migration, which is one of the reasons that I want to migrate to proxmox, since I want to install a second proxmox machine and make a cluster of them. This way I will be able to migrate from one machine to the other for maintenance purposes.


But having the disks passed through, and preventing virtual machines migration, how should be best to configure the disks then?

 

[FSNaval]

my final goal is to have two proxmox servers for vm migrations BUT I also want my VMs to be able to see the same data no matter from which server they currently run on. Can this be done by shared storage? and if so, should this shared storage originate from the proxmox servers or through a third machine running truenas or openmediavault?

 

[louie1961]

my final goal is to have two proxmox servers for vm migrations BUT I also want my VMs to be able to see the same data no matter from which server they currently run on. Can this be done by shared storage? and if so, should this shared storage originate from the proxmox servers or through a third machine running truenas or openmediavault?

That's what I do. All my data sits on one or more NAS devices.