Seek Advise on File-System / Setup

[mat.ec]

Hi Folks,

some years back I was already playing with proxmox but I have not been working with this since more than 5 years, Now my Synology died and I need a new NAS.

From an old project I have a spare HPE MicroServer Gen10 with 32 GB RAM and 4 x 4 TB WD Red I've added a small SSD for the OS and additional to that there are two APU (PfSense and the other one for the ubiquity controller) - that's why now proxmox comes back into play.

I would assume installation of proxmox itself and also VM creation is straight forward - but I struggle with the basics: what file system is the best for my proxmox setup on the Gen10 MicroServer? There's a Marvell built-in Raid-Controller but this seems only be able to build RAID 0,1 or 10, so I thought about not using the hardware Raid. Actually I never dealt with zfs or other "modern" filesystems yet so I'm a little bit stuck.

Having a failsafe setup is important so if one of the disks will fail I would like to easily replace the broken one. Beside the PfSense and the Ubiquity Controller the server shall act as NAS (Windows & Mac File-Server, TimeMachine Backup Storage and Media-Player).

Could someone help with an advise if it's worth to get familiar with zfs or would simple software raid / lvm be sufficiennt for a SOHO NAS?!

thanx in advance,

mat.

 

[Dunuin]

The first question would be how you plan to do your NAS. Keep in mind that PVE is no NAS and can't share filesystems out of the box.

 

[mat.ec]

Thanx for the swift reply and sorry for not being precise.

Beside a VM for the firewall I thought about a VM for the NAS. The solution is yet to be found but I thought about TrueNAS, OpenMediaVault or Rockstore - where some of them seem to be better on virtual hardware than other. Also not sure about this.

 

[Dunuin]

I thought about a VM for the NAS. The solution is yet to be found but I thought about TrueNAS, OpenMediaVault or Rockstore - where some of them seem to be better on virtual hardware than other. Also not sure about this.

Then it's the question how get your disks into that VM:
A.) using virtual disks
B.) virtualized-passthrough via qm set: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Passthrough_Physical_Disk_to_Virtual_Machine_(VM)
C.) physical passthrough by buying a HBA card using PCI passthrough: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI_Passthrough

All options got its benefits, limitations and downsides

 

[UdoB]

HPE MicroServer Gen10 with 32 GB RAM and 4 x 4 TB WD Red

My general purpose approach while being rotating rust: ZFS with two vdevs with 2 drives mirrored - basically a "Raid10". You would install PVE directly on all four of them. Especially I like the fact that all four are bootable

@Dunuin has already mentioned that supplying storage to (for example) a OMV-VM usually needs direct access to complete disks. With my approach this is NOT possible because there are no unused disks.

You may look for tools like "Zamba" (https://github.com/bashclub/zamba-lxc-toolbox) to create a file server (including shadow copies¹ via Zfs snapshots, accessible via Windows File Explorer) in a container though...

---
¹ what is the correct term for this...?

 

[mat.ec]

Hey Folks,

thanx a lot for your support. Basically this pointed me to the right direction. It's not about Files-System, it's about basic design and capacity planning.

Based on your feedback there are two basic concepts that I will now investigate further:
- passthrough n of my drives to a VM and run whateverNAS
Benefit is to have a bare metal like NAS with all features of this solution, downside is to "block" the drives for any other purpose

- let PVE take care of data integrity and backup and run the needed services as container or VM
With this I will not have a bunch of un-wanted tools, run single purpose container but the maintenance effort is much higher

Maybe I modify Udos idea and create a vdev with two drives mirrored for PVE and VM's / container and pass the remaining drives to a NAS VM.

I'll keep you posted.

 

[mat.ec]

Hi Folks,

let me get back to this... actually I did some reading and found many advise not (!) to pass a disk to a VM without having a dedicated PCI to get this done... so I will go for the striped mirror...

However - I'm still not sure how ZFS will handle raw files for VMs... Would it be better to have my 3 TB files on a dataset using a container or shall I better create a 4 TB virtual disk and attach this t a VM (as I would like to create a fileserver for Windows & Apple using Cockpit as my admin interface)

thanx for any advise.

Mat