PVE OS and VM storage

H

Hyperion

New Member
Mar 22, 2023
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Hi all,

I'm quite new to Proxmox, so it would be great to get your input on the following. I'm planning to install PVE on an intel NUC (NUC11ATKC4), but I'm unsure about the best way to store the OS and the VMs.

The NUC has one internal M.2 SSD slot, which currently holds a 256GB drive. In addition, it has 2 USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (10 Gbps) which can be used to connect external disks. As the 256GB disk is probably a bit small for both the PVE OS and the VMs, I thought to buy a new 1TB M.2 SSD. To be able to still use the 256GB disk, I could buy an external case and put one disk in the NUC and connect one via USB. That being said, 1TB should probably be enough for the OS and the VMs, so I could also just only use the new 1TB drive.

In short, I see three options for storing the OS and the VMs

Option 1:
  • Internal 1TB: OS and VMs
Option 2:
  • Internal 256GB: OS
  • External 1TB: VMs
Option 3:
  • External 256GB: OS
  • Internal 1TB: VMs
I mainly use the server for Plex, Home Assistant and some ancillary services. Nothing is absolutely critical, so I'm not too worried about a bit of downtime. That being said, we have become pretty used to our home automation. So it would be annoying if that was down for more than a day or two.

Which of the above options would you pick in my situation? Is there an even better solution that I haven't considered?

Many thanks for your help!
 
Ok clear. It would still be the same type of disk inside. But I guess its the connection that would make it less stable right?

From reading online I got the impression a lot of people prefer having separate disks for the OS and the VMs. But as connecting a second disk over USB is the only option here, your point is that the postential stability issues don’t outweigh the benefits?

Down the road I will try to add more redundancy, but I wanted to give this a go first. If I make sure to backup the system frequently, recovering it on a new disk if the main disks breaks should be doable right?
 
Hyperion said:
Down the road I will try to add more redundancy, but I wanted to give this a go first. If I make sure to backup the system frequently, recovering it on a new disk if the main disks breaks should be doable right?
Click to expand...
No matter which of those two disks fails, if you don't got backups of the data from both disks you will end up without working VMs. All configs are only stored on the system disk, only virtual disks are stored on that VM disk.
 
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