How would you set up this server

[JohnnyBeGood]

Hello,

I have a new server with 64GB RAM and 4 x 2TB Hard Drives and my plan is to move VMs from ESXi 6.7 to it.
With that much storage what is the best approach to set it up? I would like to also explore Proxmox Backup and maybe setup as VM and pass-through?

Any suggestion what is the best approach will be much appreciated!

 

[Dunuin]

HDDs or SSDs? Consumer or Enterprise grade? Do you got a NAS or other server for a second copy of your backups? How important is uptime?

 

[JohnnyBeGood]

HDDs or SSDs? Consumer or Enterprise grade? Do you got a NAS or other server for a second copy of your backups? How important is uptime?

Thanks for the reply!

• 4×2 TB Enterprise Grade SATA Soft RAID HDDs
• Yes, I do have another TrueNAS server
• Uptime is very important since I will be hosting a couple of personal websites

 

[Dunuin]

Then I would use the 4 HDDs as a ZFS striped mirror (raid10).
And PBS I would run as a VM on your TrueNAS server with local zvol as storage.
And you might very easily hit a bottleneck with those HDDs and might need to switch to Enterprise grade SSDs.

 

[JohnnyBeGood]

Then I would use the 4 HDDs as a ZFS striped mirror (raid10).

Ok, my remote OVHcloud server for some reason when I booted from Proxmox v8.0-2 ISO is only showing 3 out of 4 drives during inital setup. On the control panel it shows all 4.

And PBS I would run as a VM on your TrueNAS server with local zvol as storage.

Just to clarify. Run PBS in Proxomox VE VM or TrueNAS VM?

And you might very easily hit a bottleneck with those HDDs and might need to witch to Enterprise grade SSDs.

Even with Enterprise Grade SATA's I might hit a bottleneck?

 

[Dunuin]

Just to clarify. Run PBS in Proxomox VE VM or TrueNAS VM?

VM running on TrueNAS. PBS isn't creating image files you could restore without a running PBS. When you PBS is gone (for example because it was also running on your PVE) you won't be able to restore anything until you install and set up a new PBS. And performance should also be better when using local zvols instead of NFS. So another point to run your PBS on the TrueNAS and not on PVE.

Even with Enterprise Grade SATA's I might hit a bottleneck?

There is the sync IOPS performance you can expect comparing HDD vs Consumer SATA SSD vs Enterprise SATA SSD vs Enterprise NVMe SSD:
So yes, HDDs are terrible as a storage for VMs/LXC as there you wan't IOPS performance and this is where HDDs really suck. No one would buy a HDD these days to run a single Win11 on it. Now think you are running dozens of OSs at the same time on that single HDD...
Fine for cheap cold storage, not good to put your VMs/LXCs or any DBs on it.

 

[JohnnyBeGood]

Got it. I need to figure out why 3 drives are visible out of 4. RAID10 requires 4 drives.
If, for whatever reason, I'm unable to make 4th drive visible, I guess I’ll have to take a completely different approach for my setup.

 

[JohnnyBeGood]

So far the support is not helping and there's no answer as to why the 4th hard drive is not shown https://prnt.sc/LrdseCGHik7L
At this point, I think I have to install Proxmox on just one disk and install TrueNAS VM to use the other 3 hard drives?
I'm running out of ideas and not finding anything similar here on the forums or online.

 

[Dunuin]

What server do you got? I for example remeber the 4 bay MicroServers where you got 5 SATA port but where one SATAport can only use optical drives and no HDDs.

 

[JohnnyBeGood]

Supermicro X10SDV-TLN4F. Hard drives are visible on their control panel when I use their install template.