[SOLVED] Install Proxmox to RAID1 USB boot drive

[lmm5247]

I'm planning on purchasing an HP MicroServer Gen10 Plus to run Proxmox.

It has 4x3.5" drives bays (2 will be for SSDs to run Proxmox, 2 will be for HDDs for bulk media/file storage).

------------------------------------------------
|                                              |
|  ------------------      ------------------  |
|  |   Drive1       |      |   Drive3       |  |
|  |   SSD (RAID1)  |      |   HDD (RAID1)  |  |
|  |   Proxmox      |      |   Storage      |  |
|  ------------------      ------------------  |
|                                              |
|  ------------------      ------------------  |
|  |   Drive2       |      |   Drive4       |  |
|  |   SSD (RAID1)  |      |   HDD (RAID1)  |  |
|  |   Proxmox      |      |   Storage      |  |
|  ------------------      ------------------  |
|                                              |
------------------------------------------------

However, I noticed the server also has an internal USB 2.0 port. HP sells a microSD RAID 1 USB Boot Drive that apparently can be used to install an OS onto.

I know ESXi can be installed onto a flash drive or SD card, and then basically runs out of RAM after it boots. I'm aware that Proxmox (Debian) does not like to be installed onto USB media and does not perform well. However, does this product change any of that? I'm guessing the answer is no, but wanted to check.

 

[Dunuin]

You can boot proxmox from USB devices but Proxmox writes a lot (for example 30GB/day) and most USB Sticks and sd cards can't handle that.
Using a USB DOM with SLC NAND or a USB-SSD should be fine. But that won't be fast, especially if it is only USB 2.0.

 

[Rindoza]

Can we get a useful answer to this question? Such as what is causing the writes? I heard that it is just logs writing to the proxmox disk, which if so is easy to circumvent. If that is the case, having to allocate an entire disk for just logs is foolish, and should not be the communities practice.

 

[Dunuin]

Can we get a useful answer to this question? Such as what is causing the writes? I heard that it is just logs writing to the proxmox disk, which if so is easy to circumvent. If that is the case, having to allocate an entire disk for just logs is foolish, and should not be the communities practice.

Search the forum. there are several threads. The main problem is the way NAND flash is working...
1.) you get logs
2.) you get metrics for the graphs
3.) for HA proxmox needs to write the config files again and again every minute to the storage (even if you got a single node setup)

That all wouldn't be much data but SSDs can't write small files without erasing and rewriting big chunks of data (write amplification). So if proxmox updates the HA config every minute and that is 1 KB, the SSD will write 1 MB each time to store that. Thats why you get 30 GB of writes at the end of the day.