Intro & some questions r330 Poweredge

[paulie420]

Hey folks! I hope to become a user around these parts, and have been enjoying learning Proxmox. I have around 10 Raspberry Pi projects running in my home network, and have come to rely on them - and outgrow their shortcomings. Who needs a NAS w/o the compute power to send files @ a respectable mbps... I want to step into the REAL server world. I bought a starter server, a Dell Poweredge r330 - w/ 64GB RAM, 2 1.2TB SAS HDDs and 6 1TB SATA HDDs. Everything went perfect, right?...

It came with the SAS drives in a RAID0 and the SATAs in a RAID5 - 2.4TB available on the SAS and 4.7TB on the SATAs... I thought I should have some redundancy and went down the rabbit hole of trying several configurations, some that wouldn't work because of ZFS issues or otherwise - and I chased an idea of creating 6 RAID0 drives and handing them off to Proxmox using a ZFS handled by PM...

Anyway, I tried a few configs that didn't pan out and I NOW have:

SAS drives in a RAID1; 1.1TB available for my Proxmox install boot drive. I de-RAIDed all of the 1GB SATA drives and handed them to Proxmox by creating a ZFS from the GUI in a RAID10. This only leaves me with 3TB, but should be solid? In my new-ness, I don't know if I've made an error by taking the RAID config away from my PERC card in the Dell... and another friend tells me I should hack the PERK and put it in IT mode and let Proxmox handle ALL the RAID stuff, and not use the Dell hardware as Dell intended. Sounds cool, but.. I'm pretty green.

Another, probably dumb, question is - can [/should] I install Proxmox on top of say... Ubuntu Server? I know PM lives on top of Debian anyway, but I know my way around the CLI a lot - but a hypervisor seems like a really good fit for wanting to migrate all my Pi servers over to one box. Later, I want to populate the drive bays with 8x8TB drives... maybe that helps you suggest a plan to go down; I was THINKING about something like leaving two of the 1TB SATA drives de-RAIDed or in a RAID0/1 so that my 8TB drive upgrade has a place to start...

I don't grasp all of Proxmox's way of giving disk space to the system; LVM, LVM-Thin, Directory, ZFS?!? Whats what and where do I PUT things. And... the HDD I installed to ; can I use IT for anything? And - why does my LVM show as 99% full - I JUST installed it... but that space SEEMS to be available in the LVM-Thin?!?!? Confused newbie user. Set me straight!!

So, I thought I'd check in with you guys... I hope to chat with some of you and participate in this forum... altho I think it'll take me awhile to be proficient with PM. It really seems like a great software, and I don't even think I have to check out ESXi or any other solutions! I live in Portland, OR, own a sales company and LOVE retro computing... one of my favorite servers is running my BBS - in 2o21! (20ForBeers.com:1337 - use an ANSI terminal software like SyncTerm or Netrunner and dial into the 1990s!!)

Thanks for any responses.. loving Prox; just need to get my hardware working WITH it.

pAULIE42o
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[Dunuin]

It came with the SAS drives in a RAID0 and the SATAs in a RAID5 - 2.4TB available on the SAS and 4.7TB on the SATAs... I thought I should have some redundancy and went down the rabbit hole of trying several configurations, some that wouldn't work because of ZFS issues or otherwise - and I chased an idea of creating 6 RAID0 drives and handing them off to Proxmox using a ZFS handled by PM...

Anyway, I tried a few configs that didn't pan out and I NOW have:

SAS drives in a RAID1; 1.1TB available for my Proxmox install boot drive. I de-RAIDed all of the 1GB SATA drives and handed them to Proxmox by creating a ZFS from the GUI in a RAID10. This only leaves me with 3TB, but should be solid? In my new-ness, I don't know if I've made an error by taking the RAID config away from my PERC card in the Dell... and another friend tells me I should hack the PERK and put it in IT mode and let Proxmox handle ALL the RAID stuff, and not use the Dell hardware as Dell intended. Sounds cool, but.. I'm pretty green.

Your friend is right. You shouldn't use ZFS if you got as Raid Controller. Read here why. If you want to use ZFS you need to cross-flash that PERC Raid-Controller to a LSI HBA. But keep in mind that it won'T work with every model. Many of the H310 and H710 for example can be flashed to IT mode.
So if you want to use raid but don't want to flash the Raid Controller to IT mode you should use HW raid and something like LVM-Thin ontop.

Another, probably dumb, question is - can [/should] I install Proxmox on top of say... Ubuntu Server? I know PM lives on top of Debian anyway, but I know my way around the CLI a lot - but a hypervisor seems like a really good fit for wanting to migrate all my Pi servers over to one box.

PVE will only work ontop of a Debian. You can't use something else like a Ubuntu. And its recommended not to use any desktop environment.
If you really want you could install PVE ontop of a Debian but that only makes sense if you really need features like mdadm, textbased installer or encryption that the PVE Iso Installer doesn't support.

Later, I want to populate the drive bays with 8x8TB drives... maybe that helps you suggest a plan to go down; I was THINKING about something like leaving two of the 1TB SATA drives de-RAIDed or in a RAID0/1 so that my 8TB drive upgrade has a place to start...

If you want 8x 8TB drives I would virtualize a TrueNAS. But for that you really want an additional HBA card (or PERC flashed into IT mode) so you can use PCI passthrough to passthrough the complete HBA with all 8 disks attached to it into the TrueNAS VM. That way your VM can directly and physically access the drives and you don't got that virtualization overhead.

I don't grasp all of Proxmox's way of giving disk space to the system; LVM, LVM-Thin, Directory, ZFS?!?

You really should google that. LVM and ZFS is a complex topic and you really need to learn how to use them and when to use them. You can write complete books on how and when to use them.

Whats what and where do I PUT things. And... the HDD I installed to ; can I use IT for anything?

You can use the same drive for everything but HDDs are a really terrible option as a VM storage. HDDs just can't handle all the IOPS all the VMs/LXCs produce. You could look for some second hand enterprise/datacenter SSDs and use them as your VM storage. Especially if you want to use ZFS you shouldn't use consumer grade SSD because they might die within months depending on the workload.

And - why does my LVM show as 99% full - I JUST installed it... but that space SEEMS to be available in the LVM-Thin?!?!?

LVM is a volume manager. Its 99% because your LVM uses 99% of the disk. But that doesn't mean that 99% are full. You need to learn how to use LVM. Use commands like vgdisplay and lvdisplay to see how much free space you got on your LVM.

 

[paulie420]

Dunuin:

I didnt quote yer message, but thanks for the really helpful reply. Being brand new, I'm just learning what I want to do with my server and while I do want my NAS, some containers, Home Assistant and a couple other services - but I need to think about the best way to do that. I thought that virtualization was IT....

Appreciate your words, and I will [have to] familiarize with LVM. I wasn't aware that it was... such a big part of how virtualization works. THANKS... I love this stuff and your words aren't on deaf ears.