Recommended way to share an existing external drive

[dchaumond]

Sorry, new to proxmox, perhaps not the best place to ask such a question.

I'm replacing an existing home solution based on a Debian server hosting some services I'm sharing in my network using now proxmox on this server.
As most of my services are dockerized, I've successfully migrate those services to proxmox using containers.

But I wonder now how to be able to provide classic sharing services: SMB, NFS ... sharing existing external drives USB physically wired to the server.

Sure I can install smb software on the proxmox host but it would be better to use a dedicated VM or container to implement the sharing. This may require to share the mount point, it doesn't seems to be available using the UI, we need to edit the conf file.

What is the preferred/standard way to provide such services ?

 

[leesteken]

Providing services (to other systems or VMs/containers) is more cleanly done via a VM or a container (as it can be backed up and does not interfere with or depend on Proxmox). Sharing filesystems via a container is more efficient than a VM (and allows for more dynamic memory management) and it allows you to easily share it directly with other containers and even the Proxmox host. Then you only need NFS and SMB for VMs (or manually configure 9p if you really want to).

 

[dchaumond]

Thanks for your answer.

I need also to provide those shared drive to other devices in my home network using smb and/or NFS. And what is not so clear for me is that tuto and videos describe how to share a new drive, not how to share an existing one.