Optimal data sharing between VMs

Glacial1222

New Member
Aug 17, 2024
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0
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Hi All,

I am investigating different methods for using my available HDD and NVME drives from multiple VMs (primarily Linux, a few Windows ones too). I have 5 Proxmox nodes, all of which in the same cluster.

The following two approaches seem most appealing to me so far:

  1. Running Turnkey Linux fileserver (which has a management GUI built in) in a container on Proxmox for NFS/SMB file shares and having Proxmox handle ZFS and disks directly
  2. Running TrueNAS in a VM in Proxmox and passing through the disks to it
It seems like option 1 is best for performance and uses less resources but lacks the nicer management GUI of option 2. Perhaps option 2 also has an easier interface for eg. setting up backups to Synology, handling user/permissions access, etc.

In either case, it is still not clear to me what the implications are for using this storage from different VMs on the host that the storage is attached to. Do they introduce network/virtualisation hops that slow things down significantly vs some way of directly accessing the plugged in drives? Or does it understand that the drives are still plugged in locally and give good speed? I understand that accessing the file shares on other nodes will have a network hop and be slower.

So, I am seeking advice on which option I should go with. Security is important to me so I want an easy way of limiting access to certain file shares eg. by user accounts, VLAN segmentation, etc. What are people's experiences with each approach in terms of security and performance? Or is there an alternative approach that I should be considering here?

Thanks for your help and suggestions!
 

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