Please can someone review my Proxmox plans/storage layout.

[marcosscriven]

I've been reading a lot of posts about storage layout options. My general takeaway is that:

1. The answer always comes down to requirements.
2. There's a vast difference in requirements

In my case, requirements are strictly home-nerd/software developer/very occasional gamer - so huge clusters and arrays are not of interest. Actually, they are of interest, just not needed.

My hardware is:

• Ryzen 3900x
• 32GB mem
• GT 1030 for my Linux VM. Although this is my daily driver, I don't need great GPU performance
• RTX 3080 mostly for gaming Windows VM
• 3x nvme:
  • 1TB WD 850
  • 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus
  • 512GB Samsung Evo

Aims:

• 1 VM for my main desktop:
  • Daily driver so needs to be stable
  • Want OS/software on separate volume to data
  • GT 1030 permanently passed through
  • As many cores/ballooning memory as possible
• 1 VM Windows gaming:
  • Usually not running. Perhaps a couple of hours a week.
  • Half the cores and memory
  • RTX 3080 passed through (I know, expensive card for occasional gamer, but mostly for VR)
• Various containers for home services:
  • Plex
  • Home Assistant
  • Pi Hole
  • etc.

My initial plan for storage is:

1. 512GB for Proxmox + ISO storage
2. Fast (in terms of IOPS) WS 850 for main VM OS volumes
3. Slower 1TB Samsung for OS backups and data volumes

 

[aaron]

It does sound okay for your use case. Obviously, having disks mirrored will help.

Anyway, keep an eye on the wearout of the PVE OS SSD as PVE writes quite a lot to the OS disk. This can cause cheaper SSDs to wear out faster.

 

[marcosscriven]

Thanks @aaron

Presumably I can't effectively mirror without losing the PCI4 speed of my WD drive.

I'll also look into reduce writes by PVE (guessing things like noatime etc)

 

[BunkerHosted]

I've been reading a lot of posts about storage layout options. My general takeaway is that:

1. The answer always comes down to requirements.
2. There's a vast difference in requirements

In my case, requirements are strictly home-nerd/software developer/very occasional gamer - so huge clusters and arrays are not of interest. Actually, they are of interest, just not needed.

My hardware is:

• Ryzen 3900x
• 32GB mem
• GT 1030 for my Linux VM. Although this is my daily driver, I don't need great GPU performance
• RTX 3080 mostly for gaming Windows VM
• 3x nvme:
  • 1TB WD 850
  • 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus
  • 512GB Samsung Evo

Aims:

• 1 VM for my main desktop:
  • Daily driver so needs to be stable
  • Want OS/software on separate volume to data
  • GT 1030 permanently passed through
  • As many cores/ballooning memory as possible
• 1 VM Windows gaming:
  • Usually not running. Perhaps a couple of hours a week.
  • Half the cores and memory
  • RTX 3080 passed through (I know, expensive card for occasional gamer, but mostly for VR)
• Various containers for home services:
  • Plex
  • Home Assistant
  • Pi Hole
  • etc.

My initial plan for storage is:

1. 512GB for Proxmox + ISO storage
2. Fast (in terms of IOPS) WS 850 for main VM OS volumes
3. Slower 1TB Samsung for OS backups and data volumes

It may be best to setup an NFS for storing ISOs, in the case of a serious failure you will be without your ISOs files for restoration. On another note, remember that MANY games will not actually run under a windows VM due to anti-cheat software complaining about virtualization; Just another thing to consider! Sounds like a great build though!

 

[marcosscriven]

It may be best to setup an NFS for storing ISOs, in the case of a serious failure you will be without your ISOs files for restoration. On another note, remember that MANY games will not actually run under a windows VM due to anti-cheat software complaining about virtualization; Just another thing to consider! Sounds like a great build though!

Thanks on the warning re games. I don't tend to play multi-player stuff (which IIUC is why VMs are banned to prevent cheating). In fact, the only 'serious' games I play are VR - hence really trying to make the most of a single machine.

Good suggestion on the NAS - I do happen to have a little DS220j on its way.

 

[jolly]

Anyway, keep an eye on the wearout of the PVE OS SSD as PVE writes quite a lot to the OS disk. This can cause cheaper SSDs to wear out faster.

Why does proxmox write a lot to the OS disk? I was expecting minimal use after install, and was planning on using an old SATA drive to boot, and NVME for vm storage.

 

[aaron]

Why does proxmox write a lot to the OS disk? I was expecting minimal use after install, and was planning on using an old SATA drive to boot,

Logging. Depending on what services you run, more or less. A basic PVE install will log quite a bit but once you start using Ceph for example which will have a lot more services running on the node, the logging will increase dramatically.

What kind of old SATA drive do you plan? If it is an HDD you will be fine. If you have a very basic setup and use an older SSD, just keep an eye on the wear out in the first few weeks/months to get an idea if it wears out at a noticeable rate.

 

[marcosscriven]

If it’s all in /var/log can always redirect that to a slower and more robust disk.