Not understanding disks and storage types...

[User_Zero]

Hey all, new to Proxmox, just wanting to make sure I'm setting up my drive the "right" way... I'm sure this is easier than I'm making it out to be, but I'm stuck :/

I have a second disk in my server that i want to use for all my VMs/containers/ISOs, etc... basically everything but the hypervisor OS itself.

Last night i partitioned the disk into two partitions: a 100GB partition for isos and the rest of the disk (about 1.9TB) for VMs.

I added the 100GB partition to Disks>Directory and the 1.9TB Partition to Disks>LVM.

I had a few questions, before I went any further:

Is this the "right" way to do this?

My When i go to Datacenter > Storage it looks like "Directory" partition can host any type of content but my "LVM" partition can only host disk image and container content... it seems like it would be more versatile to make the entire disk one big, 2TB Directory partition and have the flexibility of hosting whatever content i wanted... What's the downside of going this route?

Thanks in advance!

 

[FloUhl]

Just delete the LVM and make a dirctory it just makes ur life way easier than trying to understand that

 

[Dunuin]

Just delete the LVM and make a dirctory it just makes ur life way easier than trying to understand that

Maybe easier, but not always better if you care about features, performance and so on.

My When i go to Datacenter > Storage it looks like "Directory" partition can host any type of content but my "LVM" partition can only host disk image and container content... it seems like it would be more versatile to make the entire disk one big, 2TB Directory partition and have the flexibility of hosting whatever content i wanted... What's the downside of going this route?

Jup, what I would do is to create a 2TB LVM-Thin pool. You can only store VMs/LXCs virtual disk to such a LVM-Thin storge. But you could then manually create a LV ontop of that LVM-Thin pool, partition it, format it and mount it using the CLI. Then you could manually create a directory storage pointing to that mountpoint and use it for ISOs/templates.
Another option would be to for example create a VM/LXC that got a virtual disk stored on that LVM-Thin pool and acts as a NAS. You could then add a CIFS/NFS storage to your PVE host for ISOs/templates. Another benefit would be that you then got a shared storage, so multiple PVE noes/VMs/LXCs could access the same files.
And ZFS of cause also would be a choice if you care about your data and less about performance. Its not very hard to create a directory storage for ISOs ontop of a ZFS pool, where a zfs storage also would allow you only to store VM/LXCs virtual disks.

 

[User_Zero]

@FloUhl / @Dunuin - thank you both for the input!

@Dunuin - On the mobo, the server I'm running literally only has one SATA port and one NVME port... The 'boot' drive is using the SATA port and the NVME will be hosting everything else. Any additional local storage would be over usb3. Is there any reason to run an LVM or LVM-Thin if i have just the one drive?

Full disclosure: I can get around in linux, but I struggle to wrap my head around these file systems. I only just learned how to partition drives two days ago and generally understand what an LVM is, as of last night. From a 'being overwhelmed' perspective, deleting the LVM is looking like a good option

 

[Dunuin]

LVM was invented because it is a pain to work with partitions. With partitions you are fixed to the sizes that you have partitioned. With LVM, and even more LVM-Thin, its way more versatile as you can dynamically work with LVs. Sure, its more complex, but if it wouldn't be better to use LVM, not all the Linux distros would use it by default.
You might for example have a look a keywords like "thin-provisioning", "disk expansion", "snapshots" and so on.

 

[User_Zero]

LVM was invented because it is a pain to work with partitions. With partitions are are fixed to the sizes that you have partitioned. With LVM, and even more LVM-Thin, its way more versatile as you can dynamically work with LVs. Sure, its more complex, but if it wouldn't be better to use LVM, not all the Linux distros would use it by default.
You might for example have a look a keywords like "thin-provisioning", "disk expansion", "snapshots" and so on.

Thanks for the input! I played around with the LVM more on Sunday. I'm still not fully understanding, but i think im at least coming around to grasping it, now... i got my disk setup and fired off my first vms. thanks again!