Proxmox / ZFS / Single-box solution

[dlasher]

Given all the awesome features of ZFS (and the awful zfs-on-linux speed/features/etc), it's a pity there's no way at present to get Proxmox running on FreeBSD-based distro (where ZFS v28 is supported)... From what I can see you, can do openVZ and KVM on FreeBSD 9.x.. (however FreeBSD uses jails natively), and of course FreeBSD supports ZFS, so it seems like the perfect framework..

is there any other way I'm not thinking of to single-box ZFS / OpenVZ and KVM?

{EDIT: Found the zfs-on-proxmox link - can't get dkms happy, but at least someone else is trying it... -- http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/ZFS)

 

[PigLover]

I've got ZoL on Proxmox working following the instructions in the wiki. It was very straigh forward.

You can limit the size used by the ARC by adding a line to /etc/modprobe.d/zfs.conf

options zfs zfs_arc_max=536870912. # or any size in bytes you wish...

Doing this is very important - ZFS is very greedy on memory and large read/write transactions will use all available memory. This forces the VMs to begin swapping and is pretty devastating to performance.

My suggestion would be to decide how much memory you want for ZFS plus how much you need for VMs and be sure you have the physical memory to do both. Limit the ARC so that it work use up more than its allocated share.

 

[sgtfoo]

Interested in using ZFS myself, just to get this right..
If I wanted to start using ZFS on my current single Proxmox node for all of my local storage, I would have to clear all of my storage drives and then setup ZFS and then point the Proxmox /var/lib/vz at the ZFS volume?

Or would it entail having a fresh install of Prox and then setup ZFS?