Installing Proxmox on an HPE Microserver Gen8 with RAID

[ullbeking]

I'm considering installing Debian Stretch on an HPE Microserver Gen 8. This machine has four main drive bays, which I would run in AHCI mode. I would mirror the first two with SSD's for the VM's, and mirror the second two with large HDD's for bulk storage. This server would be a lightly loaded home server for several users at a time.

It would also function as a NAS, by exporting the mirrored HDD's to the network over 1 GbE. The NAS would not get much traffic either.

I would install Proxmox on top of the base Debian installation. The two SSD's would be mirrored and managed using mdadm+LVM+filesystem, similarly for the two HDD's. The boot drive would be either on SD, USB flash drive, or the fifth ATA(PI) interface that normally has an optical drive; or a combination of these drives.

Does this sound feasible? Thanks!

 

[oguz]

I would install Proxmox on top of the base Debian installation.

As long as this is the case, anything you can do on a regular Debian system should be doable. Proxmox doesn't change a lot of Debian related stuff, only the kernel and some extra packages, so it is still considered Debian.

 

[ullbeking]

Thanks @oguz . OK, this is cool.

Do you think that my proposed configuration of:

• boot disk (where the ODD would normally be, i.e., "bay 5")
  
• mirrored pair of SSD's (probably Intel DC 400-800 GB), for the VM's using mdadm+LVM+XFS (bays 1+2)
  
• mirrored pair of HDD's (8 TB WD Reds), also using mdadm+LVM+XFS (bays 3+4)

would be a good configuration? I would set BIOS to AHCI mode. I have figured out a way of getting the boot disk to boot when AHCI is set (this is a known issue with the Microserver Gen8).

It's going to be connected to the rest of my home network, lightly loaded, with a 1 GbE cable using NFS.

 

[alexskysilk]

would be a good configuration? I would set BIOS to AHCI mode. I have figured out a way of getting the boot disk to boot when AHCI is set (this is a known issue with the Microserver Gen8).

It would be fine, but if you're running your disks in AHCI mode you might want to use ZFS for your data volumes as it provides more features and better fault detection/correction.