New Proxmox Hardware

[macamba]

Currently I have a custom build system on which I run Proxmox, providing two functionalities:
- The virtualization environment for personal LAB purposes
- Proxmox host operating system also for 'NAS'/ file server services, i.e. based on SAMBA and LUKS encryption.

Now the system is up for replacement, so now I am considering two alternatives:
1) Build a custom build mini-ITX system with latest Intel or AMD processor, and use in the same way as the old build, except that I want to add a hardware raid controller for disk mirroring. Hence, only the 2 data disks (HDD) will be mirrored, not the SSD on which I install Proxmox.

2) Buy a Synology NAS for the file server services (by which I sacrifice the encryption functionality) and a mini-PC for the Proxmox virtualization environment, i.e. probably ASROCK Beebox-S (7200U) Series (http://www.asrock.com/nettop/Intel/Beebox-S Series (Kaby Lake)/index.asp#Specification). A second Ethernet-port on the mini-PC I wan to realize with a USB to Ethernet connector.

Is it performance wise feasible to run Proxmox on the mini-PC? And how about the performance storing virtual machines on the NAS? You can assume I will connect mini-PC as well as NAS on cabled Gigabit network.

 

[jim.bond.9862]

why bother with hardware raid?
new Proxmox v5 supports ZFS natively. just install on SSD and setup ZFS raid-1(mirrored pool) for data.
this way you are not stack with hardware dependency and can simply take the data disks and move them into any machine with ZFS support and you can use them straightaway.

you also get all goodies with ZFS, snapshots, direct backup, CoW FS, ease of expandability, data compression on the fly.
do not use the dedupe option (need to turn it off after setup) so it is not memory hungree.

 

[fabian]

you also get all goodies with ZFS, snapshots, direct backup, CoW FS, ease of expandability, data compression on the fly.
do not use the dedupe option (need to turn it off after setup) so it is not memory hungree.

dedup is not enabled by default (neither by our installer, nor by ZFS itself)..

 

[jim.bond.9862]

I thought it was on by default and compression was off.
almost everywhere I look ,to minimize ZFS ram usage , people strongly suggest to turnoff dedup and turn on compression on ZFS pools
so I figure I mention it here. also I could swear I saw a post somewhere that said that dedup was on by default, but I am not 100% sure where i saw it. anyway, it does not hurt to mention it.

 

[fabian]

nope, it's compression = on and deduplication = off, for obvious reasons. the table used for deduplication eats RAM like crazy, while compression actually not only saves space, but also improves performance for a lot of use cases

 

[macamba]

So if I understand correctly with ZFS if one disk of the two disk fails I still have my data? And adding a new disk will rebuild the "RAID-1 mirror"? Sounds great! Than of course I will go for option 1 without Synology. So in my setup ZFS runs on top of LUKS? Or does not ZFS provides some native encryption options?

 

[Chicken76]

Another vote for ZFS instead of hardware raid controller.
Just make sure you choose a motherboard/platform that supports a lot of RAM, because with ZFS, the more RAM it has available, the better it runs.
As for encryption, I don't know if the version used in Proxmox already has encryption support, but consider that the ZFS layer will just hold your VM filesystems. You can implement encryption inside the virtual machines where you need it.

 

[macamba]

but consider that the ZFS layer will just hold your VM filesystems. You can implement encryption inside the virtual machines where you need it.

My intention is to use ZFS for user data. Or is ZFS not suitable for that purpose?

 

[Chicken76]

ZFS as a filesystem is quite suitable to hold your important data, if you provide it's requirements. You see, as filesystems go, some are intended to be blazing fast, others very lightweight. ZFS is intended to be able to hold enormous amounts of data (hence the name "Zettabyte File System") and hold it safely (copy-on-write, checksums for every block, etc.) For small setups it's not the fastest, and it's certainly not frugal on resources.

'User data' can mean many things. For example, you might have an accounting application that's running on Windows, in which case you could implement encryption on NTFS in a VM, which would be stored in a ZFS dataset.

If the version of ZoL included in Proxmox has encryption capabilities or not, I just don't know, I'm a ZFS noob myself. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can post some information.

 

[alexskysilk]

the encryption feature was introduced on ZoL version 0.7. Proxmox 5.0 still uses ZoL 0.6.5, and according to the devs 5.1 will also still be on the previous ZoL version. All things being equal, as this is a new feature I would not use it until it's been in the wild for a year or so even if the proxmox devs would add it to the release.

 

[fabian]

the encryption feature was introduced on ZoL version 0.7. Proxmox 5.0 still uses ZoL 0.6.5, and according to the devs 5.1 will also still be on the previous ZoL version. All things being equal, as this is a new feature I would not use it until it's been in the wild for a year or so even if the proxmox devs would add it to the release.

native encryption is slated for ZoL 0.8 - it has not been included in 0.7 but merged into master shortly after the 0.7 release branch was branched off.

 

[macamba]

Thanks for the responses providing me knowledge about ZFS . But my basic question in the initial post whether you would recommended option 1 or option 2, i.e. option 1 self-build mini-ITX system as virtualization and NAS solution combined or option 2 mini-PC for virtualization purpose and Synology for NAS purpose. For details see above.