Migrating to Proxmox Without Compromising SAN Functionality

[KyleS]

Hello! We are currently running vSphere for our virtual environment, with our hosts connected to our SAN via SCSI. We are currently considering migrating to Proxmox, however, we are having trouble figuring out how to do this while using our existing SAN in its current configuration. Our SAN supports SCSI/iSCSI but not ZFS, NFS, CephFS, etc. iSCSI is an obvious option, but our research has indicated that functionality within Proxmox (snapshots, etc.) will be reduced, unless we are mistaken.

There are obviously solutions that help navigate these iSCSI limitations, but what we've seen so far involves additional infrastructure and points of failure that we'd rather avoid. Has anyone else made the jump from vSphere to Proxmox will using an enterprise SAN that does not support the likes of ZFS, NFS, etc, and is limited to SCSI/iSCSI?
Our SAN is dear to our hearts and a significant investment that we would be reluctant to relinquish.

Thanks.

 

[spirit]

I'm currently working to add snapshot for iscsi/fiber channel san, it should be ready in coming month (<6 months).

 

[DBS]

Have you consider a VMware server conversion as possible an option?
I've used this option recently with a good result.

Through the storage option a connection with the VMware server is made and an import can be started.
In your situation you may need an extra storage (or local storage)

You do need a functional VMware server and a proxmox server running version 8.2.2 or newer

 

[Johannes S]

At the moment unfortunely there isn't really a ready-to-use solution to use snapshots on a SAN via ISCSI. You can use however LVM on your ISCSI so you don't need to throw away your investment: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Storage:_LVM

One workaround for the snapshot situation might (depends on your usecase) be to use ProxmoxBackupServer and do additional backups: The backup snapshots use a function of the kvm/qemu emulation layer for VMs and are thus not depending on the availability of snapshots for the storage backend:

If an existing iSCSI or FC storage needs to be repurposed for a Proxmox VE cluster, the following alternative approaches might fulfil the same goal.

• Use a network share (NFS or CIFS) instead of iSCSI. When using qcow2 files for VM disk images, snapshots can be used.
• Rethink the overall strategy; if you plan to use a Proxmox Backup Server, then you could use backups and live restore of VMs instead of snapshots.
  Backups of running VMs will be quick thanks to dirty bitmap (aka changed block tracking) and the downtime of a VM on restore can also be minimized if the live-restore option is used, where the VM is powered on while the backup is restored.
  
  https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migrate_to_Proxmox_VE#Alternatives_to_Snapshots

So the idea would be to use this together with the SAN until it's time to renew your hardware. Then you would switch to a SAN which support snapshots with ProxmoxVE (e.G. Blockbridge, NetApp/Pure is working on it too if I recall correctly but there is no release date yet) or a HCI setup with Ceph.

Of course for the workaround you would need an extra server for hosting the Proxmox Backup Server, on the other hand you will need a backup solution in any case. And you don't need a subscription to run PBS (for support of course you would need the subscription). So although this isn't ideal, it might work for your.