[SOLVED] LVM thin on software mdadm vs ZFS

[kodi_ie]

Hello all.
For various reasons I have a project that I cannot implement on vSphere and I was told the Proxmox is a the only real alternative. So yes - I am new to this platform.
I do have a server with two NVMEs and two HDDs.
I installed Proxmox 7.2 on RAID1 NVMEs with LVM thin.
However when I was digging in the documentation there were a lot of points saying that is a big no-no and in this case I should just do ZFS.

For last few days I am trying to understand what is an equivalent of Thin provisioning on ZFS and how to configure it. Like seriously - I was watching tutorials that were out of date and I am stuck.

Objective is to have those two NVMEs in a mirror and they will contain VMs for production. HDDs will be used only for backups and maybe light VMs for metrics or whatnot the client will ask.

Can someone point me to step by step how to make it happen?
I installed the default setup changing the partitions to ZFS so my local storage is ZFS and is displayed as it is in the GUI. I don't see the sparse option to setup anywhere I have no idea if it's in thin provision or not. Maybe I am just too dumb for this

 

[Dunuin]

Go to "Datacenter -> Storage -> YourZFSStorage (usually "local-zfs") -> Edit" and check if the "Thin Provisioning" Checkbox is set.

 

[kodi_ie]

Go to "Datacenter -> Storage -> YourZFSStorage (usually "local-zfs") -> Edit" and check if the "Thin Provisioning" Checkbox is set.

Yes, I got to this point it. Is that all? Or do I need to additionally tune zfs with "zfs set refreservation=none" ?

Also for some reason the default local storage is defined as a directory (and there is no option for Thin Provisioning). Did I miss a step somewhere? I just added that directory's pool as a ZFS storage and checked the Thin Provisioning checkbox.

 

[Dunuin]

You usually got two storages. A storage of type "directory" that is used as the root filesystem called "local". And another storage called "local-zfs" of type "ZFS" that stores your virtual disks (zvols for VMs and datasets for LXCs). A directoy storage is just pointing to a folder on any filesystem, so there is no "thin provisioning" checkbox for it.

 

[kodi_ie]

You usually got two storages. A storage of type "directory" that is used as the root filesystem called "local". And another storage called "local-zfs" of type "ZFS" that stores your virtual disks (zvols for VMs and datasets for LXCs). A directoy storage is just pointing to a folder on any filesystem, so there is no "thin provisioning" checkbox for it.

Thanks for the explanation.
I was missing the local-zfs for some reason.
Directory "local" was pointing at the mount point of the zfs anyway, so I just added ZFS type storage from that pool and got the option to thin provisioning. Thank you again!

 

[_gabriel]

be careful if you haven't a datacenter ssd.
consumer ssd will wear out quickly.