Planning my primary hypervisor's storage configuration

[signifywinter]

Hello, all! I new to the site and am looking forward to using Proxmox for real. My Linux and hardware knowledge is a bit rusty, so I am looking for some advice around "ideal" storage configuration. I am hoping to get things as right (or at least acceptable) as I can the first time. I've done some searching on this, but there are so many variables that I thought it would be helpful to list out what I'm working with to be more targeted.

Goal
Maximize reliability and security of all-Linux network and production services while maintaining flexibility for future use cases.

Available Hardware

Dell R730

• CPU: 2 x Intel E5-2650L v3
• Memory: 96GB
• Storage: 8 x 1TB 7.2K SAS (installed)
• Storage Options: 1 x 240GB SSD SATA (extra, I could get another if it makes sense)
• RAID: H730 PERC

Applications
This box will be hosting network services and private cloud file storage. Throughput is not necessarily a concern.

Storage Configuration
I am getting a bit tripped up here. Originally I thought I'd just do a 2 disk RAID 1 array for the hypervisor's storage and then have the rest of my disks dedicated to something like RAID 5 or 6 for VMs.

After doing some research, it seems like ZFS is worth pursuing. That said, this is very new to me and I don't have much background in it. This is where I have a lot of questions, such as:

• In general, is there an "ideal" storage approach for my situation? I am pretty sure I can do hardware RAID 1 for an array and passthrough the other disks for ZFS on my H730. Is this a good approach?
• Do the ZFS pool features passthrough to the VMs? How? Haven't been able to find details on this exactly.

I am open to all ideas here. I am not set on any one approach (e.g., ZFS vs. RAID, etc.). Any help appreciated! Thanks in advance.

 

[squirell]

If your h730 can work as simple hba, you can passthrough disks to zfs.
I can recommend separate boot(os) from zfs pool. For example, root partition on ext4 (with mdadm raid).
Use raid10 for zfs, ahift 12 and separate partition on ssd for slog. In my practice slog write 1 Tb for week on ssd in low load by 15 vms on node.
Also limit zfs arc cache.

 

[signifywinter]

Thanks, squirell!

 

[signifywinter]

One follow-up question. I should be able to do mixed hardware RAID and passthrough with the H730.

Either way, sounds like my configuration should be RAID 1 on 2 SSD drives for the hypervisor OS mainly and then a small partition on the same array for ZIL. Then, do RAID 10 on the remaining 6 disks. That sound right?

Edit: Typo

 

[squirell]

One follow-up question. I should be able to do mixed hardware RAID and passthrough with the H730.

Either way, sounds like my configuration should be RAID 1 on 2 SSD drives for the hypervisor OS mainly and then a small partition on the same array for ZIL. Then, do RAID 10 on the remaining 6 disks. That sound right?

Edit: Typo

yes, for slog use mirror from two partition on raid1 disks.
but, do not create zfs pool on disks which initialized by HW raid card.