Proxmox with several VMs/Containers + RAID storage + Nextcloud

[dirk8530]

I'm planning to build a new proxmox server from scratch. Since I'm new to the proxmox world I thought to ask some help to make rhe right decisions

Requirements:
- fast SSD's for multiple VM's/containers
- RAID setup with HDD's for bulk data

I have no problem with the basic VM's and containers. The problem is with Nextcloud.
I want to host Nextcloud with the OS on an SSD and the data stored on the RAID, wich I would like to manage in another VM with Truenas or Unraid. Is this possible and a good practice? What would be the best way to setup something like this?

Another question I have about the Nextcloud storage is if I would acces the storage pool from an SMB share, would I be able to acces the nextcloud bulk files or are they stored as a virtual disk or database on the drives?

We can also play with hardware requirements
if needed.

 

[louie1961]

I just built a machine to do this very thing. Gigabyte Aorus 550I Pro AX mobo, AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 5650GE CPU, 64GB of ECC RAM, ASmedia 1166 M.2 to SATA adapter, Corsair RM650 PSU, Fractal Design Node 304 case. I have two Teamgroup AX2 SSDs for Proxmox in a ZFS mirror to hold the OS and to store VMs, two Ironwolf drives in a mirror for my "slow" TrueNAS pool and a striped mirror of SM863a enterprise SSDs for my "fast" TrueNAS pool. I virtualized TrueNAS and passed through the M.2 to SATA adapter to TrueNAS. The Proxmox drives are on the motherboard SATA ports.

I am running Nextcloud in its own VM, and I am serving up a NFS share from TrueNAS to Nextcloud for user data. There are some workarounds that you need to do when running Nextcloud using NFS shares. First, getting the permissions right on the NFS share is critical. Make sure the share is owned by system user "www-data". Also make sure the root user is mapped to root in the NFS share "advanced" options. Also add a line to your config.php to move the update directoy to a local folder instead of on the NAS share. ('updatedirectory' => '',). If you don't move the update directory off of the share to the local drive (or VM virtual drive) then the update process will break.

I want to host Nextcloud with the OS on an SSD and the data stored on the RAID, wich I would like to manage in another VM with Truenas or Unraid. Is this possible and a good practice? What would be the best way to setup something like this?

I am running Nextcloud on Debian 12 and the OS is stored on the VM virtual drive, which in my case is on a set of mirrored drives running ZFS. I run TrueNAS on a separate VM, in a similar manner. I make storage from TrueNAS available to Nextcloud via an NFS share that I mount in the Nextcloud VM via FSTAB. When you install Nextcloud and log in for the first time it will ask you where your user data should be stored. I point the installer to the directory I have mapped to the NFS share. You could do the same thing with SMB, but I'd rather deal with the crazy NFS permissions than the user name and password of SMB. Just personal preference. I am able to use file browser on TrueNAS to read the directory so I am sure you would be able to read it from another machine via SMB. Just be forewarned that if you delete certain files in the Nextcloud data directory you will break your Nextcloud.

I chose to run Nextcloud in a VM, but your could accomplish the same result running Nextcloud in an LXC container or a docker container as well.