Proxmox Disk Installation Requirements

[jsala]

"We are currently migrating all our clients from ESXi to Proxmox. I have been looking for installation recommendations for Proxmox regarding disks. We are currently using 16 GB USB sticks; is this considered bad practice? What is the minimum size Proxmox requires?"

Please note that this is for production installations.

Thank you in advance for your help

 

[bbgeek17]

PVE makes heavy use of the boot disk. It is not recommended to use USB sticks of any size with PVE.
The better practice is to use enterprise grade SSD/NVMe. The best practices is to use 2 in a mirror config.

If you implement aggressive log rotation and are diligent in treating PVE as am appliance and not a general Linux server (i.e. dont store random files in your home directory) you should be ok with 32GB. Considering disk prices today, I'd go for 128GB.

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Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox

 

[Magneto]

PVE makes heavy use of the boot disk. It is not recommended to use USB sticks of any size with PVE.
The better practice is to use enterprise grade SSD/NVMe. The best practices is to use 2 in a mirror config.

Surely this wouldn't be a problem if the syslog and other logging is done on a rsyslog server?

 

[Johannes S]

Surely this wouldn't be a problem if the syslog and other logging is done on a rsyslog server?

No, since the main writes are to the sqlite database of proxmox cluster file system with the configuration and the Metrik files for the dashboards. Rsyslog isn't installed on PVE 8, like on Debian Bookworm

 

[UdoB]

Rsyslog isn't installed on PVE 8, like on Debian Bookworm

Yes. But the systemd-journal is, which is also writing semi-continuously ;-)

And yes, journal can send its data to a "remote syslog" equivalent

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Edit, just for the curious:

apt show systemd-journal-remote
Description: tools for sending and receiving remote journal logs

 

[Magneto]

Yes. But the systemd-journal is, which is also writing semi-continuously ;-)

And yes, journal can send its data to a "remote syslog" equivalent

----
Edit, just for the curious:

apt show systemd-journal-remote
Description: tools for sending and receiving remote journal logs

So, are you implying that when system-journal and journal entries are written to a remote syslog server, one could use USB drives, especially USB SSD drives?

 

[LnxBil]

So, are you implying that when system-journal and journal entries are written to a remote syslog server, one could use USB drives, especially USB SSD drives?

No, as said before. It will shred them, so don't use them. Just go with a Dell BOSS-equivalent solution with enterprise SSDs.

 

[Magneto]

No, as said before. It will shred them, so don't use them. Just go with a Dell BOSS-equivalent solution with enterprise SSDs.

I have some 4x 3.5" HDD chassis so the only way to properly utilize them is to use USB SSD drives.

 

[Johannes S]

You could also use HDDs for the operating system, but not for VMs or LXCs ( since they need SSDs for performance). I wouldn't use USB connected drives though, way to unrelieable for my taste

 

[LnxBil]

I have some 4x 3.5" HDD chassis so the only way to properly utilize them is to use USB SSD drives.

BOSS or equivalent does not use SATA or chassis, it uses PCIe and of course it's redundant (at least at the SSD level). You can plug in whatever you want as long as it is enterprise SSDs.