[SOLVED] Proxmox on a Dell R510 with H700 Raid Card

[czenmarco]

Hi Guys,

I am about to do my first Proxmox install on a refurbished Dell R510 ( Duan Xeons, 128 GB Ram, 12 Bay Chassis ) which comes with a Hardware RAID Controller
( rules out ZFS - I dont intend to use ZFS anyway ) and 3 raids:

- 500GB Raid 1 -> Proxmox OS
- 4000GB Raid 1 -> ?
- 8000GB Raid 6 -> ?

Currently I plan to have a Centos Guest, Windows Server Guest and a Ubuntu Guest ?

So keeping in mind ( from https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#chapter_storage )

How do i best use the 4TB Raid 1 and 8TB Raid 6 ?

Do I partition the 4TB Raid 1 into;

- 1TB ( to keep ISOs )
- 3TB ( to run VMs )

And for the 8000GB Raid 6, create a VM ( either the Centos or Ubuntu Guest or even a separate OMV/FreeNAS VM )
that will control the entire 8000GB RAID 6 and offer shared storage (CIFS/NFS ) to other VMs?

Is this line of thinking correct ?

 

[Ramalama]

Why partitions?
Do it simply with directorys, so you get something like a dynamic space.

A folder for iso's...
Another for ct
Another for vms
Another for backups...

That way you don't waste space with partitioning.
That's at least how i would do it without zfs xD

In your case partitions doesn't bring any benefit, if a disk fails, then 8tb or 4tb etc storage fails or is degraded etc...
So yeah xD

And if you need a samba server, do it with lxc and mount the same way any folder in your storage to that lxc container...

 

[Dunuin]

And if you need a samba server, do it with lxc and mount the same way any folder in your storage to that lxc container...

That doesn't work with the Windows VM he wants to use so he needs SMB/NFS anyway.

 

[czenmarco]

That doesn't work with the Windows VM he wants to use so he needs SMB/NFS anyway.

Yes ...

 

[czenmarco]

Why partitions?
Do it simply with directorys, so you get something like a dynamic space.

A folder for iso's...
Another for ct
Another for vms
Another for backups...

That way you don't waste space with partitioning.
That's at least how i would do it without zfs xD

In your case partitions doesn't bring any benefit, if a disk fails, then 8tb or 4tb etc storage fails or is degraded etc...
So yeah xD

And if you need a samba server, do it with lxc and mount the same way any folder in your storage to that lxc container...

Directories / Dynamic space - Thanks.

So;


- 500GB Raid 1 -> Proxmox OS
- 4000GB Raid 1 -> VM and ISOs
- 8000GB Raid 6 -> ? Surrender to a VM fully to offer up NFS / SAMBA to ther VMs or would it better to let proxmox offer this up instead of a VM?

Will this be good ?

 

[Ramalama]

You can share any of your raid storages to vms + samba + nfs...
You can even share through samba the vm directorys or share through samba all your storages or multiple directorys...

The basic thing of all this is simply, that you "mount" any folder that you want to your lxc container where samba is running.

And mounting folders into lxc container isn't passing a storage through... It's just mounting = you can mount the same folder to multiple containers or share this folder with host etc...

It's not an "exclusive" access mount xD

Sorry my wording is shit, but hopefully you see now that it doesn't matter how you dedicate your storage xD

Probably, use the faster raid storage for vm's/containers and the slower for samba...
Or use both storages for vms & containers & samba....
Then you can move the vms between those storages via gui, if you need to balance the storage work.

Unlimited possibilities xD

I mean if you don't like what you did later, you can still change it all how you want xD

 

[Ramalama]

That doesn't work with the Windows VM he wants to use so he needs SMB/NFS anyway.

Why do you want a samba server on a windows vm?
That makes no sense.

The downside of that is, that your shares are inside an virtual disk from windows. Dunno why someone would want this and for what, if there is a proper lxc way.

Cheers

 

[Ramalama]

Directories / Dynamic space - Thanks.

So;


- 500GB Raid 1 -> Proxmox OS
- 4000GB Raid 1 -> VM and ISOs
- 8000GB Raid 6 -> ? Surrender to a VM fully to offer up NFS / SAMBA to ther VMs or would it better to let proxmox offer this up instead of a VM?

Will this be good ?

Sry didn't readed fully xD

Don't install samba directly on the proxmox host. Do it in an privileged lxc container.

The benefit of that is, that you can backup the lxc container (without the actual shared samba files), which saves many space. And you keep the proxmox host clean.
Lxc have almost no overhead, the services inside lxc, runs basically on the host, with less privileges.
And vm = emulation = overhead.

Hope that answered everything xD

 

[czenmarco]

You can share any of your raid storages to vms + samba + nfs...
You can even share through samba the vm directorys or share through samba all your storages or multiple directorys...

The basic thing of all this is simply, that you "mount" any folder that you want to your lxc container where samba is running.

And mounting folders into lxc container isn't passing a storage through... It's just mounting = you can mount the same folder to multiple containers or share this folder with host etc...

It's not an "exclusive" access mount xD

Sorry my wording is shit, but hopefully you see now that it doesn't matter how you dedicate your storage xD

Probably, use the faster raid storage for vm's/containers and the slower for samba...
Or use both storages for vms & containers & samba....
Then you can move the vms between those storages via gui, if you need to balance the storage work.

Unlimited possibilities xD

I mean if you don't like what you did later, you can still change it all how you want xD

Noted.

 

[czenmarco]

Why do you want a samba server on a windows vm?
That makes no sense.

The downside of that is, that your shares are inside an virtual disk from windows. Dunno why someone would want this and for what, if there is a proper lxc way.

Cheers

The Centos Guest can do the Samba / NFS part ... I need the Windows Server Guest to learn / practise.

 

[czenmarco]

Sry didn't readed fully xD

Don't install samba directly on the proxmox host. Do it in an privileged lxc container.

The benefit of that is, that you can backup the lxc container (without the actual shared samba files), which saves many space. And you keep the proxmox host clean.
Lxc have almost no overhead, the services inside lxc, runs basically on the host, with less privileges.
And vm = emulation = overhead.

Hope that answered everything xD

Samba / NFS ( or maybe just Samba ) - Do in a privilege container - Ok
Keep proxmox host clean - OK

 

[czenmarco]

Additionally ...

I could just keep the ISOs in the proxmox disk right ? Bcos its a 500Gb disk ? Proxmox install will only take about 20+ GB ?

The ISOs are only used for installation ? They are not linked dynamically / live with the container / VM ?

 

[Dunuin]

Why do you want a samba server on a windows vm?
That makes no sense.

The downside of that is, that your shares are inside an virtual disk from windows. Dunno why someone would want this and for what, if there is a proper lxc way.

Cheers

I've read your text wrong. Using LXC as SMB server is fine. I through you have meant he should use LXCs with bind-mounts instead von VMs with SMB.

Additionally ...

I could just keep the ISOs in the proxmox disk right ? Bcos its a 500Gb disk ? Proxmox install will only take about 20+ GB ?

The ISOs are only used for installation ? They are not linked dynamically / live with the container / VM ?

You can do that. Just make sure how you "partition" your Proxmox drive. You can't store ISOs on a storage meant vor VMs and vice versa.

ISOs are linked live with the VMs and VMs won't start i the ISO is missing. But that is only true if the ISO is mounted to a virtual CD drive. You can unmount/eject that ISO after installation so the VM isn't using it anymore.

 

[czenmarco]

I've read your text wrong. Using LXC as SMB server is fine. I through you have meant he should use LXCs with bind-mounts instead von VMs with SMB.

You can do that. Just make sure how you "partition" your Proxmox drive. You can't store ISOs on a storage meant vor VMs and vice versa.

ISOs are linked live with the VMs and VMs won't start i the ISO is missing. But that is only true if the ISO is mounted to a virtual CD drive. You can unmount that ISO after installation so the VM isn't using it anymore.

Hi Dunuin,

Partition the Proxmox drive ? Is there an option for that at installation -> I did not see that ...? Or it must be done before hand ?

ISOs are linked live with the VMs and VMs won't start if the ISO is missing -> Thanks for the heads up on this. I did not read this in the manual .

You can't store ISOs on a storage meant vor VMs and vice versa -> Even if the ISOs are in a separate directory ?

 

[Dunuin]

Partition the Proxmox drive ? Is there an option for that at installation -> I did not see that ...? Or it must be done before hand ?

You can't store ISOs on a storage meant vor VMs and vice versa -> Even if the ISOs are in a separate directory ?

Look here the paragraphs "Advanced LVM Configuration Options".

In case of LVM:
"maxroot" is your OS storage where proxmox is installed. This is a "normal" storage where you can create directories.
"maxvz" is your VM storage. You can't create directories here and because of that you can't store normal files like ISOs.

 

[czenmarco]

Look here the paragraphs "Advanced LVM Configuration Options".

In case of LVM:
"maxroot" is your OS storage where proxmox is installed. This is a "normal" storage where you can create directories.
"maxvz" is your VM storage. You can't create directories here and because of that you can't store normal files like ISOs.

hdsize - Defines the total hard disk size to be used. T
his way you can reserve free space on the hard disk for further partitioning (for example for an additional
PV and VG on the same hard disk that can be used for LVM storage).

swapsize - Defines the size of the swap volume. The default is the size of the installed memory, minimum 4 GB and maximum 8 GB.
The resulting value cannot be greater than hdsize/8.
Note If set to 0, no swap volume will be created.

maxroot - Defines the maximum size of the root volume, which stores the operation system.
The maximum limit of the root volume size is hdsize/4.

minfree - Defines the amount of free space left in the LVM volume group pve. With more than 128GB storage available
the default is 16GB, else hdsize/8 will be used.
Note LVM requires free space in the VG for snapshot creation (not required for lvmthin snapshots).

maxvz - Defines the maximum size of the data volume. The actual size of the data volume is:

datasize = hdsize - rootsize - swapsize - minfree

Where datasize cannot be bigger than maxvz.
Note In case of LVM thin, the data pool will only be created if datasize is bigger than 4GB.
Note If set to 0, no data volume will be created and the storage configuration will be adapted accordingly.


Noted. Thanks.