How to share zfs zpool/datasets from PVE to external standalone 1:1 app servers?

[jaysol]

We have a couple of older Windows 7 Pro based application servers that can not be virtualized, but they rely on a considerable amount of storage.

We're started using PVE for a few other things already and haved starting to get used to using ZFS within the PVE environment. In the interest of keeping support processes and GUI's somewhat similar, we would like to share zpools or datasets from a PVE server to other servers outside of the PVE.

Is there a best practice approach for this? sharesmb?

If it matters, in this case the standalone application servers only need a single folder and drive letter to write data to (as a single admin user) on the Windows side.

 

[fabian]

yes, exporting via NFS/CIFS/.. works fine. I would not recommend the builtin share functionality of ZFS (for NFS it is okay for very simple setups, for Samba it does not work very well), but you can just export the mounted dataset yourself using samba or whatever other fileserver implementation you want.

 

[LnxBil]

Is there a best practice approach for this?

I would recommend to use an LX(C) container (e.g. Debian) as "separation of concerns" and use mount points for your data inside of your container then export them via Samba to the outside world. With this approach you can also have shadow copy support for you windows machines which is very nice. It can map zfs snapshots to "previous version" timestamps for windows.

 

[jaysol]

I would recommend to use an LX(C) container (e.g. Debian) as "separation of concerns" and use mount points for your data inside of your container then export them via Samba to the outside world. With this approach you can also have shadow copy support for you windows machines which is very nice. It can map zfs snapshots to "previous version" timestamps for windows.

That sounds interesting! Are you aware of any tutorials or articles on this method? I've searched a little but have only found people like you who have suggested they it working.

 

[guletz]

Hi,

Only one tutorial:

https://amwright.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/using-windows-previous-versions-to-access-zfs-snapshots/

 

[jaysol]

Hi,

Only one tutorial:

https://amwright.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/using-windows-previous-versions-to-access-zfs-snapshots/

Thanks! Well... so far I've got the Debian 10 LXC in PVE set up and Samba installed on it. Now I just need to figure out how to "use mount points for your data inside of your container".

 

[LnxBil]