Is there any progress in getting a cluster filesystems certified for PVE??

[__Peter__]

Hi,

With the turmoil created by Broadcoms acquisition of VMware, I keep getting questions from current VMware users about the possibility of migrating their workload over to Proxmox. However, in most cases, we run into the issue of existing investments in SAN storage that they would like to reuse. QnD fixes using LVM is not an option for most of them, they usually ask for an equivalent vmfs with proper cluster support. It's a big missed opportunity not to have something like OCFS or GFSv2 certified for PVE. At least OCFS should be doable as it's got a fairly good track record at Oracle, not the easiest to set up, but it usually works fairly well after that.

It's a walk in the park when the customer is using v-san, just use CEPH, but for vmfs and SAN storage, I keep losing to Nutanix.

 

[LnxBil]

It's a big missed opportunity not to have something like OCFS or GFSv2 certified for PVE.

Those filesystems have been around for many, many years and even decades and they didn't make it to the list of officially supported filesystems due to their inmaturity. If they would work well they would have been integrated many years ago, but they don't. I worked with all of them and can confirm the inmaturity in comparison to something like ceph. Proxmox is not implementing filesystems, this is done upstream by their respective vendors like it is done by RedHat for CEPH.

The integration is not going to change with another post about how Proxmox should do it. They evaluated and they support rock solid systems, not everything that is possible in Linux. You can just go and use OCFS2 or GFS if you want, get the people who can support it if you find them or buy a supported storage.

they usually ask for an equivalent vmfs with proper cluster support.

LVM has cluster support for decades and it is block storage, which is MUCH MUCH better for virtualization than doing files on a (cluster) filesystem. I really don't get the people that ask things like that, they really don't know what they're talking about and are totally restricted in their way of thinking due to years and years of VMware. VMware is not even supporting trim for vmdk on their own cluster filesystem and don't integrate a backup solution. You have to buy something another vendor programed. How can that be???? I really cannot imagine why a vendor like that is the number one hypervisor provider
It's always a fun discussion with customers if I talk to them about the great VMware ecosystem.

 

[bbgeek17]

The one thing that VMware did right for their bottom line is to introduce HCL. This restricts the number of things they have to support and test with.
Adding requested filesystems, which have had very little attention from their respective vendors recently, means that Proxmox has to provide support. That means adding SAN testing across various vendors.

The "status quo" is unlikely to change in observable future.

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Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox

 

[LnxBil]

The one thing that VMware did right for their bottom line is to introduce HCL. This restricts the number of things they have to support and test with.

Yes, we have this also for the Proxmox Kernel that is the Ubuntu LTS kernel and their HCL, yet I do not know if this is the same level of compatibility and/or testing.