Plans for supporting software raid?

[JBB]

I note from the roadmap that software raid support isn't mentioned. I know that it's possible to do it by installing PVE in a standard Debain install, but that's not supported.

Will PVE ever get software raid support in the future? I ask because costs for co-location are increasingly being calculated by power consumption.

 

[pizza]

You can use ZFS as replacment for software raid. You can also use softraid with the Proxmox installer.
It works for Proxmox 3 & 4. Some will say that's no good for production but I use it for years without any problems

 

[JBB]

Well yes, but since Proxmox VE on a software RAID is neither supported nor recommended by Proxmox I was hoping to get some indication from them as to whether they might support it in the future.

 

[JNL]

I would like to know what do you mean with soft RAID, couse im thinking about doing a RAID 10 with the Intel Chipset in my motherboard, and then install PMVE 4.2 over it, i shouldn't expect that to work? Some pp call that software raid as in no RAID card present.

 

[JBB]

That should work - see pizza's comment and link above. By software RAID I mean RAID without a hardware RAID controller. The PVE bare metal installer currently does not allow for you to construct a software RAID as part of the supported install process.

 

[fireon]

I know both. Softwareraid and ZFS. And after a lot of years i can say use ZFS or and HW Raidcontroller for real productionystems at an office.
And yes Softwareraid works also really good. But haven'd these nice features from ZFS. And normal Linuxsoftwareraid is not so easy to handle as a zfs, or and HW Raidcontroler. One Problem is ZFS needs a lot of memory. So when you have only 8 GB of RAM, use an HW Raidcontroler or Softwareraid...

 

[JBB]

Thanks fireon - do you know if Proxmox will support software RAID in the future at all?

 

[jeffwadsworth]

I would like to know what do you mean with soft RAID, couse im thinking about doing a RAID 10 with the Intel Chipset in my motherboard, and then install PMVE 4.2 over it, i shouldn't expect that to work? Some pp call that software raid as in no RAID card present.

I would recommend just getting some disks and using the ZFS option during Proxmox instllation. You can choose up to 8 drives I believe. Just go with zraid mirror. Do not worry about configuring anything on your controller.

 

[LnxBil]

Software raid was never supported in Proxmox and I see no reason to support it, because ZFS is already included and provides software raid.

It's very simple: If have no experience, but a hardware raid controller (or ordinary server hardware), if you're familiar with software raid, set it up yourself, then you most probably won't need Proxmox support after all. If you really need "Support" from Proxmox, buy a hardware raid controller or stay with ZFS.

 

[fireon]

Software raid was never supported in Proxmox and I see no reason to support it, because ZFS is already included and provides software raid.

It's very simple: If have no experience, but a hardware raid controller (or ordinary server hardware), if you're familiar with software raid, set it up yourself, then you most probably won't need Proxmox support after all. If you really need "Support" from Proxmox, buy a hardware raid controller or stay with ZFS.

I'm agree with you.

 

[JNL]

I would recommend just getting some disks and using the ZFS option during Proxmox instllation. You can choose up to 8 drives I believe. Just go with zraid mirror. Do not worry about configuring anything on your controller.

Ok, im not using the onboard RAID but, why RAIDZ instead of ZFS RAID10? i know its like RAID5 and it will give me more space, but im in the need of more write speed too.

 

[fireon]

then use 2 RaidZ (Raid50)

 

[LnxBil]

...and please: experiment with ZFS BEFORE migrating to it. If you've never worked with non-old-school filesystems, there are a lot of new things to learn and especially to pay attention to.

Also: if your system is too slow, buy more or better disks and more RAM. RAM is very crucial with ZFS.

 

[fireon]

...and please: experiment with ZFS BEFORE migrating to it. If you've never worked with non-old-school filesystems, there are a lot of new things to learn and especially to pay attention to.
Also: if your system is too slow, buy more or better disks and more RAM. RAM is very crucial with ZFS.

YES!!! This is absolutely essential.

 

[JNL]

Thx everyone for the feedback, i still dont know why doing raidz would be better for me than zfs's raid 10.

 

[fireon]

Thx everyone for the feedback, i still dont know why doing raidz would be better for me than zfs's raid 10.

It's depending on your use purpose. Raid10 is the fastest. RaidZ0 (Raid50) is also fast. But yes everything is depending what you would like to have, how many harddrives to you have, to you would like to use, would like to use in the future, how many HDDslots your array have, and and and... so many things to concerns.