New Proxmox Node - questions on storage choices

[vshaulsk]

Good Day!!

I currently have one proxmox node running on some standard desktop hardware: AMD 6-Core CPU with 16gig ram
I have a LSI 8-port SAS raid card, with pair of SSD's in raid 1 on which the proxmox system is installed
For my VM storage I have a pair of 1TB 7200rpm disks in raid 1 - setup as LVM

Recently I purchased a used Dell R710
- Dual Xenon X5650 CPU's
- 24 gig ram
- Perc 6i raid controller

The system has space for 6 3.5 inch disks and I am trying to figure out what is the best way to setup my storage. I was thinking of the following options:
1) setup a pair of SSD's in raid 1 for proxmox OD; 4 x 1TB 7200 RPM in raid 10 for VM storage (LVM - Thin)
2) setup a raid 10 with 6x1TB 7200 RPM drives (have both OS and LVM-thin on same raid pool)

Maybe I should do something else?

I would like a fast storage system with some redundancy

- using only SSD is too expensive
- network storage with ISCI & NFS are possible, but I am not running 10gig Nics so local storage is faster.

All suggestions/questions are welcom

 

[guletz]

For a fast storage, 6x 1Tb in raid10 (aka a 3 separate mirrors in raid0) will be the best (good write and good read ). But if yours VM will mostly use reads operations, maybe is worth to use a raid10 like 2 x mirrors (each mirror will have 3 ways/disks). In this case the redundancy and IOPs will be better.

 

[vshaulsk]

Is there any advantage of having the proxmox OS on solid state drive?
Performance gains?
How much does the OS disk performance affect the overall performance of Proxmox?
- Is VM storage the only real key in the performance of the system?

 

[alexskysilk]

Is there any advantage of having the proxmox OS on solid state drive?

It'll boot faster.

How much does the OS disk performance affect the overall performance of Proxmox?

not much, if at all.

- Is VM storage the only real key in the performance of the system?

Aside from cpu, ram, and networking- yes.

 

[vshaulsk]

Thank you for the info.

The next question would be what about the file system?
Should I use LVM-thin ?

Create a ZFS volume ?

I like the ability to be able to do snapshots, but with now having two nodes the ZFS option for replication would be nice.

Performance is still key

 

[alexskysilk]

if performance is key, then you're looking at your design backwards. What is the minimum required performance? for how many clients (be it vms, cts, nfs, ?) What is your required fault tolerance, and what are your fault domains (eg disk, server, datacenter, ?)

Once you define the criteria you can design the solution.