Proxmox cluster (getting closer) - planning storage (# drives) and third member for cluster

EngChiVi

Member
Sep 21, 2020
11
2
8
Greetings,

About a year ago my interest in Proxmox lead to me to post few initial questions outlined in (previous post) where I was asking how to think about installation, Ceph needs.

I now have 3 nodes of HP business computers (HP S01-pf1013W) that were picked up (very ) cheap new from local retailer. They came with basic CPU (2C/2T Coffee Lake Celeron) and bare minimal 4GB RAM and are now getting upgraded to decent CPU (intel 10700 8C16T) and 32 GB of RAM that motherboard support. I would like to run them in 3 node cluster with Ceph as storage for the few low rate of change VMs I have. Each node hardware supports 1 NVME and up to 3 SATA drives. I need less than 1 TB of storage for all of the VMs combined

Questions
1) How should I logically plan the storage for Proxmox cluster? one drive for OS, one for Ceph to be used for VM storage, anything else I need to isolate (write ahead log ,etc)? How big do I need to make OS drive and what is more important to be placed on NVME (I assume Ceph pool for later use as VM storage ) ?

2) I now have only two intel 10700 CPUs and would like to build those two nodes first which would not give me a stable cluster (need 3 to be valid) - can I use other spare hardware (i.e. old mini PC with anemic Celeron 3215U ) to put debian on it, install corosync and let cluster see it as third member so quorum is maintained? Later when I have last CPU, I evict the old mini PC and add third node to the cluster. Would this approach work? I am also thinking of scenarios where one node is down for extended amount of time and I still need cluster to be stable with odd number of nodes (adding mini PC back to make the number of nodes odd).

Thank you
 

About

The Proxmox community has been around for many years and offers help and support for Proxmox VE, Proxmox Backup Server, and Proxmox Mail Gateway.
We think our community is one of the best thanks to people like you!

Get your subscription!

The Proxmox team works very hard to make sure you are running the best software and getting stable updates and security enhancements, as well as quick enterprise support. Tens of thousands of happy customers have a Proxmox subscription. Get yours easily in our online shop.

Buy now!