Shared disk between VM's

[George23]

I wish to share storage between two virtual machines . I have done so by modifying the conf file of the second vm inside /etc/pve/local/qemu-server and added the drive of the first VM. Note that its a disk used just for images , not the root file system etc.
The issue i am having is that the files systems are mounted on both vm's however the second vm doesnt get updates to the files.

Is there a better way of sharing disks between vm'? would using an nfs share work better?

 

[dcsapak]

please do not do this, as the different operating systems do not know about each other and you will likely get corrupt data.
yes in this case something like nfs should be used.

 

[George23]

Thanks for the quick reply

 

[shantanu]

I wish to share storage between two virtual machines . I have done so by modifying the conf file of the second vm inside /etc/pve/local/qemu-server and added the drive of the first VM. Note that its a disk used just for images , not the root file system etc.
The issue i am having is that the files systems are mounted on both vm's however the second vm doesnt get updates to the files.

Is there a better way of sharing disks between vm'? would using an nfs share work better?

When you share a disk like that, the filesystem should be designed for such a disk sharing; example GFS2, OCFS, CFS (Veritas), etc.

For experiments, GFS2 which is part of default CentOS and OCFS which is part of default Oracle Linux could be possible choices.

HTH,
Shantanu

 

[spirit]

I'm using ocfs2, works fine. (but don't use writeback)

 

[George23]

When you share a disk like that, the filesystem should be designed for such a disk sharing; example GFS2, OCFS, CFS (Veritas), etc.

For experiments, GFS2 which is part of default CentOS and OCFS which is part of default Oracle Linux could be possible choices.

HTH,
Shantanu

yes i was considering gfs2 , i will try that first and see how stable it is otherwise i will go back to using nfs

 

[MrLu]

New to Proxmox...
I'm looking for something similar, I want to use 5tb hdd that i have installed as an actually drive on a VM or a share drive on a VM. Is this possible? Thanks in advance.

 

[Nemesiz]

Share storage using 9p https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/virtfs-virtio-9p-plans-to-incorporate.35315/#post-184993

 

[dietmar]

You can simply pass through the disk using something like "scsi1: /dev/disk/XYZ..." (if only used by a single VM).

 

[Bytales]

If both VMs have Windows 10, could i add the disk directly to one VM ?, and them inside this VM share it "through the Network", so that the second Windows VM sees it as a "Network drive" ?

In Unraid you could share a mounted drive directly, and be accesable through the Network, regardless of you were running vms or not within Unraid,

And i could see it as a Network drive, on the Laptop from where i accesed winraid through the console, provided the Laptop was on the smae Network.

I could write https://192.168.2.131/ and it got me to a Folder where all the shared drives and Shares appeared.

Is there something similar with ProxMox ? I really liked that Feature from unraid, because i could for instance attached an external Memory stick to my Laptop, and copy the stick Contents to the shared drives or Shares, without having the Need to connect the stick physically to the Server and passing it through a VM.

 

[Belokan]

You could install samba package on your ProxMox node and share the drive for your VMs. But not sure it is supported.

Best solution, for me, is to virtualize your samba server. In a simple container running only the samba server for instance or using a VM based on a NAS oriented distribution (OMV, unRAID, FreeNAS, ...) passing the drive thru.

 

[Bytales]

Damn, i never though i could create a VM with Unraid, and share the disk there, for both the machines. damn ! The benefits of virtualization !

 

[guletz]

Damn, i never though i could create a VM with Unraid, and share the disk there, for both the machines. damn ! The benefits of virtualization !

Hi,

If you need to put a nail in a wall, yes you could use even a tank - it will work. But is complicated an it will waste many resurces!
Why do you not try to use a hammer for this - aka a simply ftp server. You can use a any ftp client on your laptop to upload your images, and any browser for you win clients(even in read-only mode if you need)

 

[Bytales]

I wanted a bit more functionality than a FTP server, as the plan is to add more disks in the future. I think i will make a FreeNAS server, and use that to give the VMs storage.