Newbie too ProxMox & VE in general: Newbie Questions ..

[thomo_d]

Hey Guys;

I was told about proxmox from another board and how it can be a big help with the likes of data management and how I could utilise multiple systems on my Home Lab ..

I have never looked in to Virtualisation and I know very little about it but have been reading a lot & watching YT videos. I am very new to ProxMox and all things Virtualisation so I have some questions and if anyone is able to help; I'd appreciate it.

I'm curious to know if setting up a VM will be good enough for storage. Selecting an image and running that image on the node of choice. Would this be too the HDD's size on the node good enough.

Just exactly what is a container. What does it do and how do it work. What's the difference between a container and a VM.

What is the best option for storage. Should I learn how to use Ceph but just exactly what is Ceph. I'm generally struggling to wrap my head around this. Do I use Ceph from the CLI with in the terminal or can I use the Web-UI what I believe is Java Script front end based.

I have watched Videos on how a Hypervisor works and what they are and what they do.

Using the systems on my Home Lab, can I use the multiple nodes to individually store a single file. As in split the file across multiple systems \ nodes for maximum storage.

Is Ceph complex to learn. Will I need to learn and interact with the CLI.

Over all can someone explain ProxMox to me. I know its free but is the software ProxMox made up of multiple components.

I think their is a paid version but the thing is I really want to become fluent in this or at least understand virtualisation a lot better so I'm hoping I can get to a point were I can take out some sort of subscription and overall I'm looking for a solution for data storage which is why I was pointed in the direction of Ceph and ProxMox.

If any of you Guys can help with a better understand or just want to say something since I'm a compleate n00b I'm listening.

Thanks.

 

[Alwin]

Reading through your text, I see some technologies that you might want to look into.

Take a separate learning tour for each of them: Container [1] (LXC [2] in PVE case), KVM [3], Ceph [4], ZFS [5], LVM [6], Proxmox [7]
It will involve a lot of searching too, as each of those technologies come with different requirements and choices.

Will I need to learn and interact with the CLI.

In any case you need to know linux basics [8] at least, like in LPIC [9].

Over all can someone explain ProxMox to me. I know its free but is the software ProxMox made up of multiple components.

Well, Proxmox VE brings all the mentioned technologies together, with a management interface (GUI + CLI) to easily administrate all of them. More in the link [7] or on your favorite search engine.

I'm looking for a solution for data storage

If that's the only thing you want to do, then I suggest to also look into FreeNAS [10], openmediavault [11] or openfiler [12].

which is why I was pointed in the direction of Ceph and ProxMox.

With Ceph you already need three machines to start with and it is a distributed storage system.

You said that you are new to all of this, so I rather recommend, that you start with the linux basics and what each technology is. I think, then you know where to head next to and what solution fits best to your needs.

Happy reading and searching.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating-system-level_virtualization
[2] https://linuxcontainers.org/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel-based_Virtual_Machine
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceph_(software)
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_(Linux)
[7] https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#_introduction
[8] https://www.edx.org/course/linux-basics-the-command-line-interface
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Professional_Institute
[10] http://www.freenas.org/
[11] http://www.openmediavault.org/
[12] http://www.openfiler.com/