New VM Server best config

[carlitonz]

Hi Guys and Girls.

So im planning on performing a new server upgrade for a dental practice I do some IT for.

I'm looking at running Proxmox VE on an AMD R5 3600 based server running Windows server 2016. Server 2016 hosts some dental practice and imaging software. Fairly standard stuff. Their current server is failing due to old age and the Win server 2008 is EOL.

My proposed build is as follows and this is where I am more than happy to take some suggestions as to the exact config and setup of the host system.

My Plan is:
PM VE hosted on desktop build.
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU
32GB DDR4 3200MHZ RAM
1x 256GB Samsung NVME drive - Proxmox Boot drive
2x 500GB Samsung 2.5" SATA drives in ZFS Raid 1. - Server 2016 VM storage
2x 2TB WD RED or seagate Iron Wolf NAS Drives for Practice Data storage (Image Files, database files and such)
1x small Graphics card (gt 1030 or equivalent for pci passthrough)

I would like to go with a vm environment because vms are easily able to be backed up and fairly hardware agnostic, Downtime from hardware failure is fairly minimal and moving the vm to a new set of hardware in the future is less daunting than the current setup provides. Th main data is for the current setup is stored on a raid 1 array on the ageing HP server. The dental software stores all its user generated files on that.

My main Questions are:

Should I host VMS on a ZFS raid 1or something else? What is the best practice for getting the best performance and reliability from a vm?
IS Zfs even the best option?

What is the best way to store common files that are accessible by the the VM? (about 600GB small files between 50kb and 30MB) I was thinking of creating a new virtual disk and storing it on the 2TB ZFS raid array. needs ok iops as the client side software does make alot of small changes and additions to this data. Also needs to be redundant in case of a power failure. I have heard ZFS and cause issues if cache is not flushed properly.

As far as backup was concerned I was going to use a truenas vm to create a share that automated backups of the vm and virtual disk container backup to. This can then be linked to a cloud backup for offsite storage.

At this point I feel like I'm making things way more complicated than they need to be. All I need is a redundant vm system to host a Windows server 2016 VM, Backups of vm and data and away to automatically backup those backups to a cloud system.

Again if anyone has any suggestions that would be amazing


Thanks

 

[aaron]

I would add another boot drive and install it as ZFS raid1 so the host can keep running if one of the boot drive fails.

Other than that, having two zfs pools set up as raid 1 and creating VM disks on them is a valid approach. Just keep in mind that you should not fill it all the way up. The rule of thumb is that a ZFS pool should not get fuller than 80% for the best performance.

Should you need faster hardware at some point you can build a new server and with a bit of foresight (same amount of zfs pools with the same name) you could temporarily create a cluster with the two hosts and live migrate the VM to the new host.

 

[carlitonz]

Thanks for the reply. yeah adding a second redundant boot dive would be a good Idea.
Good to know that a simple zfs mirror raid for the vms and data will be fine for the intended purpose.


Thanks

 

[Dunuin]

Keep in mind that the virtualization and zfs adds overhead and you might get alot of IOPS the HDDs can't handle. And you want to run a DB on that pool so you probably get alot of sync writes which can't be cached.
If you got some spare HDDs I would test that first if a pair of mirrored HDDs can handle the workload. Not that you buy the HDDs and realize later that SSDs or Raid10 might be a better choice.