Seeking Advice on Hybrid Storage Setup with Proxmox and Unraid

[alanant]

Hello everyone,

I’m looking to improve my current configuration of Proxmox and Unraid and would appreciate some advice on the best approach.

My goal is to achieve higher performance for VMs and LXC containers while leveraging Unraid's capability of managing mixed hard drives of various sizes for bulk storage and data protection. Currently, I have Unraid running as a VM in Proxmox. Unraid handles the cache and storage (including parity). Proxmox is running on a 128 GB NVMe.

Here are my planned changes:

• Proxmox: Handle the cache locally for VMs and LXC containers, consisting of 2TB NVMe drives (ZFS Mirror).
• Unraid: Manage a Btrfs array for bulk storage and data protection, utilizing its capability to work with mixed hard drives of various sizes. This array will be accessible to Proxmox via network shares.
• Snapshots and Replication for the cache in Proxmox to a single ZFS drive in the Unraid array, with the Unraid parity disk protecting this drive.

I’m leaning towards this hybrid approach to balance performance and storage flexibility. However, I'm curious if anyone has experience with a similar setup or any recommendations on best practices to ensure smooth integration and optimal performance.

Also, Unraid's "Mover" tool handles moving cache data to the array. Is a custom script with cron jobs using rsync the best approach in Proxmox?

Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

 

[z0rg0n]

Hi! I'm looking into a similar setup where I have an Unraid array used for storage space and VMs running on Proxmox.

What kind of solution did you end up settling on? There seems to be a lot of discussion out there so it's hard to filter out the noise.

From my research it seems like setting up an iSCSI link between Proxmox and Unraid is the best option but if someone has experience with something else and can recommend it please do.

 

[alanant]

I ended up implementing the setup I mentioned earlier. Proxmox manages 2 x 2TB NVMe drives in a ZFS mirror, and I passed through the controller to Unraid, which handles a 14TB parity drive along with an array of a 14TB, 6TB, and 4TB drive. Initially, I created the LXCs on a 128GB NVMe, but I later migrated them to the ZFS mirror. The system has been running flawlessly for the past three months.

 

[z0rg0n]

In your case is the Unraid mounted to Proxmox as an NSF share? Have you had any problems with Unraid in either ZFS or XFS?

 

[alanant]

I enable the LXC containers to access CIFS shares from UnRaid (SMB) on the Proxmox host. My process involves creating a group on both the LXC and the Proxmox host that has the same GID, allowing permissions to be aligned. Here's the simplified workflow.

In the LXC:
Create a group (lxc_shares) with a specific GID that matches the host.
Add the relevant user (e.g., plex) to this group so it can access the CIFS share.

On the Proxmox host:
Create mount points for each NAS share on the host.
Add the NAS CIFS shares to the /etc/fstab file to ensure they are mounted automatically with the correct user and group permissions (UID and GID).

Bind mounts:
Modify the LXC configuration (/etc/pve/lxc/101.conf) to bind the mounted shares on the host to directories inside the LXC container.

There may be a better way to do this, but it's working for me.