Raid workaround inside VM

wiryono

Member
Jan 20, 2015
5
0
21
Hi,

On my city it is difficult to get a good hardware RAID, and for software RAID implementation is quite difficult in PROXMOX VE.
Now what I want to raid is not the proxmox it self but the vm.

Mostly people will use ceph or raid the datastorage for vm, but since the resource it's not available here I've been thinking of using some workaround.

1st Storage - This is where PROXMOX VE is installed and also use for ISO storage
2nd Storage - for vm storage, connected locally
3rd Storage - for vm storage, connected locally

Now for each VM lets say database server I'm going to use RAID 10. So I create 2 disk from 2nd Storage and 2 disk from 3rd Storage and attach all four to this VM.

From inside the VM, I use mdadm to create RAID 10 this way if one of the Storage broken I simply change it and rebuild the RAID inside the VM.
This way I got two storage performance instead of one which is the real RAID does. Of course this method must be specific to only use either RAID 1 or RAID 10. But is there a catch ?

Another problem is in above RAID 10 the RAID 0 is done from 2 virtual disk inside one storage, will it be faster read and write or better put each virtual disk in it's own storage ( thats mean 4 storage is needed )
 
Although it is not officially supported by proxmox, I would suggest you to try ZFS, installed on local PVE node.
Just install PVE on a single ssd disk and build a ZFS pool with the rest HDDs.You can "partition" this ZFS pool in as many slices (datasets) you want and use it for vms,isos etc.

Check this wiki: http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/ZFS

Your scenario about using mdadm inside vm with virtual disks, although it may work, it adds more complexity and management issues.
 

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