Next Steps...

ThinkPrivacy

Active Member
Sep 22, 2016
17
1
43
51
Soooo, I have been running my unicast Proxmox cluster for almost 2 years now with zero downtime and have been very pleased with it, but there are some things I would love to change and I now have the opportunity to do so.

We are about to get either GigE or 10GigE fiber installed in our office which means I can finally bring the cluster home instead of having to use dedicated server hosting through a supplier that does not provide multicast in a country thousands of miles away. This gives me more access, more control, more security and significantly reduces my costs.

But there is another side to this - using dedicated servers in a data center meant I didn't have to setup the network myself, I just had to configure the servers. Moving the servers to my office, I am going to need to setup the network for them so I was hoping I might be able to get some advice on this.

I will be starting with 3 nodes initially + 1 dedicated storage server and will potentially add new nodes in the future as required. My current setup is 3 nodes without any dedicated storage server so things are already going to be a little different from a configuration perspective but I want HA.

First things I need to consider is networking. I will need an 8 port managed switch for the multicast network with GigE on each port and I am unsure which one to purchase - there are a lot of them out there and I don't want to make a bad choice (should support IGMP Querier as well as IGMP Snooping too right?) - I have never setup a multicast network before so this is entirely new to me.

The servers will have 2 GigE ports each - one for the multicast internal network and one for containers/VPS that need public facing IP addresses - I presume this is a sensible approach to take? The non-multicast ports will connect directly to the gateway router. Currently my cluster is a mix of containers/VPS some which are only accessible on a private network via VPN and others which are public facing (web, DNS, mail etc.) and this will remain the case. Some of the containers/VPS are also connected to a second VPN so they can talk to each other (my database server is serving data to both private servers and public servers for example).

So I was hoping some of you might be able to recommend some SOHO managed switches which will give me full multicast support but won't cost me a kidney?

Also if anyone has any guides or links to resources beyond the wiki on setting up HA cluster I would appreciate it (I set my cluster up almost 2 years ago and it was non-trivial to say the least, it would be nice to find an up to date guide for Proxmox 5.*).

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
Soooo, I have been running my unicast Proxmox cluster for almost 2 years now with zero downtime and have been very pleased with it, but there are some things I would love to change and I now have the opportunity to do so.

We are about to get either GigE or 10GigE fiber installed in our office which means I can finally bring the cluster home instead of having to use dedicated server hosting through a supplier that does not provide multicast in a country thousands of miles away. This gives me more access, more control, more security and significantly reduces my costs.

But there is another side to this - using dedicated servers in a data center meant I didn't have to setup the network myself, I just had to configure the servers. Moving the servers to my office, I am going to need to setup the network for them so I was hoping I might be able to get some advice on this.

I will be starting with 3 nodes initially + 1 dedicated storage server and will potentially add new nodes in the future as required. My current setup is 3 nodes without any dedicated storage server so things are already going to be a little different from a configuration perspective but I want HA.

First things I need to consider is networking. I will need an 8 port managed switch for the multicast network with GigE on each port and I am unsure which one to purchase - there are a lot of them out there and I don't want to make a bad choice (should support IGMP Querier as well as IGMP Snooping too right?) - I have never setup a multicast network before so this is entirely new to me.

The servers will have 2 GigE ports each - one for the multicast internal network and one for containers/VPS that need public facing IP addresses - I presume this is a sensible approach to take? The non-multicast ports will connect directly to the gateway router. Currently my cluster is a mix of containers/VPS some which are only accessible on a private network via VPN and others which are public facing (web, DNS, mail etc.) and this will remain the case. Some of the containers/VPS are also connected to a second VPN so they can talk to each other (my database server is serving data to both private servers and public servers for example).

So I was hoping some of you might be able to recommend some SOHO managed switches which will give me full multicast support but won't cost me a kidney?

Also if anyone has any guides or links to resources beyond the wiki on setting up HA cluster I would appreciate it (I set my cluster up almost 2 years ago and it was non-trivial to say the least, it would be nice to find an up to date guide for Proxmox 5.*).


If you need a shared storage (for HA and live-migration) but without a dedicated network storage we recommend ceph https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Ceph_Server#Installation_of_Proxmox_VE.


To have separate networks for cluster (multicast) and application communication is what we recommend. Use rather also a third network for the previously mentioned Ceph server communication.

Regarding network hardware it's mainly a question of money you can spend. Even cheap environment works in principle and may fulfill all your current requests, but you cannot expect high quality and reliability in that case.
 

About

The Proxmox community has been around for many years and offers help and support for Proxmox VE, Proxmox Backup Server, and Proxmox Mail Gateway.
We think our community is one of the best thanks to people like you!

Get your subscription!

The Proxmox team works very hard to make sure you are running the best software and getting stable updates and security enhancements, as well as quick enterprise support. Tens of thousands of happy customers have a Proxmox subscription. Get yours easily in our online shop.

Buy now!