New Storage Setup Advise

[jack11]

Hi.

We plan to buy 2 unit storage for datastore and backup storage. Currently our setup 6 node compute with proxmox-v5.2 hypervisor. Since our currently CEPH storage almost 6 years, so we plan to buy to replace with the new storage and approach not using hyperconverged CEPH storage anymore and plan to buy external storage appliance (Synology connected either ISCSI or NFS). Since the SSD drive are expensive we plan to used SATA disk as Data and SSD M.2 as Caching drive.

The specification are as shown below:

1. Datastore Storage
SYNOLOGY NAS RS1619xs+ Rack Station with (Intel Xeon &16gb Memory)
SAMSUNG EVO+ 970-SERIES 1TB SATA SSD M.2 x 2 unit (Cache Write-Read Raid 1 Usable 1TB)
SYNOLOGY HAT5300-8T 8TB SATA 256MB 7200RPM x 4 unit (Data Drive Raid 5 Usable 16TB) + 1 hotspare
10GBps Network Port (Teaming) mounted to Proxmox Hypervisor

2. Backup Storage
SYNOLOGY NAS DS1621xs+ with (Intel Xeon & 8gb Memory)
SYNOLOGY SNV3400-800G M.2 2280 SSD x 2 unit (Cache Write-Read Raid 1 Usable 800GB)
SYNOLOGY HAT5300-8T 8TB SATA 256MB 7200RPM x 5 unit (Data Drive Raid 5 Usable 24TB) + 1 hotspare
10GBps Network Port (Teaming) mounted to Proxmox Hypervisor

1. Kindly advise me if the specification was the best practices setup ?
2. Kindly advise me which protocol was best performance either NFS or ISCSI which use for Datastore & Backup storage ?
3. As far I know, ISCSI was the best performance and the caching disk will be work optimize in Synology.
4. But I not sure if our planned setup as (Datastore Storage will be mounted ISCSI with LVM as VM datastore) while (Backup Storage will be mounted NFS as VM Backup), it there any issue ? or other suggestion ? I m not sure Backup will running if the datastore vm (source) using ISCSI then backup (destination) using NFS, since ISCSI cant do snapshot.
5. Currently for our server, will be hosted 4 critical system, 15 website portal (non critical) & 7 management server (non critical).

Kindly advise.

 

[Robert.H]

The SNV3400 do not have power loss protection so may not be ideal for write caching.
Ref: https://www.synology.com/en-ca/products/solid_state_drives/SNV3000#specs
Anyone has recommendations for m.2 nvme good to use, I know of Micron 7300 and Samsung DCT 983... what else?

 

[bbgeek17]

Generally, a properly coded iSCSI will outperform NFS. Of course a choice of protocols is influenced by more than speed in many cases. For example, if you do go with a NAS such as Synology you will not be able to use its iSCSI as shared storage with snapshots. There may be some out-of-tree work that was done by volunteers to support direct iSCSI - you'd need to find and test it.

if you decide to use NFS for datastore then your images will be stored in QCOW format with that format's snapshot support.

@Robert.H - we always recommend customers Micron 7300 and 9300, we find them provide best price/performance.

@jack11 Depending on criticality of your VMs/infrastructure you may want to check some of the recommended platforms here: https://www.blockbridge.com/platforms/ - we are in process of updating AMD based ones to ZEN3, this will provide even better performance at lower cost.

Blockbridge provides a shared iSCSI storage via Blockbridge Proxmox storage driver that we developed and support. Snapshots, clones and rollback are fully integrated into Proxmox CLI/UI.

Synology would be a great backup target.

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