Should I Reverse Course on Where My Proxmox is Installed (SSD vs. 1TB drive)?

[Proxmagic]

My Proxmox configured during setup to be installed on my SSD drive initally with it partitioning that drive both local and local-lvm.

Watching videos and docs, I opted to resize it where it was only seeing a portion of the drive and configured Proxmox to see the second internal 1TB drive.

The 1TB drive I setup entirely as local-lvm. Now I see the one container I setup is apparently stored on that 1TB drive. IE Highlighting that container, Resources Root Disk points to the local-lvm. I understand containers and VM's should for best performance go on the SSD drive.

1) Can I move that container to the SSD drive?

2) In getting ready to install another VM / Container, I see I do not have the option set the 1TB drive (local-lvm) to store only the ISO's, backup, template, just the Disk Image and Container. Which confuses me since the advice is to use SSD drives for VMS and Containers. I could save SSD space if I could have the ISO's and backup's here. I understand there is some sort of format different, but is this really the best use of that 1TB drive to host just Disk images and Containers?

3) Do I need to start over again and somehow have Proxmox see the 1TB drive as storage for everything but Disk Images and Containers?

 

[DerekG]

The description of your problem is not at all clear.
You don't explain what the 1TB drive is (HDD or SSD), or how you connected it to Proxmox.

Can you see 2 individual drives under the 'Proxmox node' -> 'Disks' menu.?

What can be stored on the disks, LVM or LVM-Thin is configured at the 'DataCenter' level in the 'Storage' menu. There you can select the storage, (in your case LVM or LVM-Thin), and then choose what content can be stored on each, only then will you see the correct storage options on the node itself.

 

[Proxmagic]

Thank you, I'll be more precise.

I have a MIcroPC with a 256 SSD Drive and secondary drive in it SATA 1TB mechanical drive.

After installation of Proxmox I followed videos to resize the 256 SSD drive to its full capacity. Originally it was configured by default as both local and local-lvm with the original size of both not equaling 256.

After resizing I had a 256 capacity SSD drive for local. {This was encouraged by several videos}. I added the internal 1TB drive (mechanical) as type LVM-Thin storage. I see both disks under the Datacenter storage list.

Created my first container which is a Pi-hole installation which appears to reside on the 1TB drive. IE. Highlighting that container, Resources Root Disk points to the local-lvm {LVM-Thin}.

With more time working with Proxmox, I understand VM's and Containers should ideally run on the SSD drive.

I was able to move the Pi-hole container on the local-lvm to local (1TB mechanical drive to 256 SSD drive). So encouraged by that.

The 1TB drive (LVM-Thin) can store currently only Disk Image and Container. Editing the LVM-Thin content only gives me those two options.

This confuses me a bit since ISO's and backups seem to be perfect to save on the mechanical drive and save precious disk SSD space for just the VM's and Containers. (Yet between the two drives, the SSD drive is the only drive to have the additional ability to add ISO's and backups under the edit storage option).

Why cannot my ISO's and backup be configured to save on the 1TB mechanical drive? The edit option does not give me that opportunity. I configured that 1TB drive as local-lvm (LVM-Thin) as the original default configuration created it. Figured it made sense to replicate it. Should I now delete it and format it another way? (which begs the question why was is partitioned that way in the initial setup by default).

 

[DerekG]

I'm no expert, so maybe others will chip in with comments.

I have a 7 node cluster, and all of the nodes use split local / lvm-thin of the boot SSD. The issues of running VM / CT on the boot drive is not so important in a home lab. One of my node has 20 CT's running that way and it's not an issue because in my setup, it' highly unlikely that any a few of the CT's will be running at max disk activity at the same time.

What this achieves is allowed the Proxmox root drive to be as small as possible (max 32GB), making it far easier for backup tasks. While all CT/VM stores are located on lvm-thin, and nothing else is store on that partition. That way you can dedicate the 1TB spinning drive for data storage / backup target only.

How many CT's / VM's do you plan to run? Trying it the way I have suggested, and then if you see the i/o delays increasing on the Proxmox dashboard, then you will know that the SSD is getting overloaded. Across my 7 nodes I see no more than 2% i/o delays on any node, so I can live with that.

On the point of not being able to set the 1TB to be set in any other way under the storage, I've not tried that and I have nothing setup that way. All of my external drives / NAS access is via SMB, NFS or ZFS shares, which you can then attached in the Proxmox storage and it will be allocated to the nodes to be used as you wish. An Open Media Vault VM is great and very flexible for that type of sharing and it requires little in the way of resources.

Like I said, these are the way I have the setup and as you are not expecting a 1,200 user to all be accessing an Oracle database any time soon, it should work for you too. There is no point in trying to create an enterprise ready install on a home labbers budget.

 

[Proxmagic]

I think I see the default picture. Basically the original setup that I had by default, had the Proxmox root drive on the local 'partition' and any VM's or Containers could have been setup on the local-thin 'partition.' Then I could have setup my 1TB drive as a Directory???

First question, I have and is where Youtubers and what I saw, was the entire SSD was not being properly sized. IE. just saw part of it. So these video's encouraged a person to resize it to take advantage of all the space. Why Proxmox wouldn't do that in the first place I have not found any answer on yet.

The initial setup would indeed have the VM's and Containers on the SSD drive. Still I was seeing Youtubers setting up a second drive for local-thin which in my case is a mechanical drive. And as stated above, I see now only supports VM's and CT's.

I didn't think 256 SSD would support well both the boot and VM's and CT's but it sounds like from your examples, I should be fine. I don't plan on too my VM's or CT's. Maybe 6 or so.

 

[DerekG]

I think I see the default picture. Basically the original setup that I had by default, had the Proxmox root drive on the local 'partition' and any VM's or Containers could have been setup on the local-thin 'partition.' Then I could have setup my 1TB drive as a Directory???


Correct, that is the easiest way to setup a homelab.

First question, I have and is where Youtubers and what I saw, was the entire SSD was not being properly sized. IE. just saw part of it. So these video's encouraged a person to resize it to take advantage of all the space. Why Proxmox wouldn't do that in the first place I have not found any answer on yet.


That assumes that you have alternative drive to store your separate boot, separate VM's/CT's and yet more drives to store your data. Though that is the safest way to configure the system, most home labbers do not have the luxury of separate & mirrored or redundant drives throughout.

The initial setup would indeed have the VM's and Containers on the SSD drive. Still I was seeing Youtubers setting up a second drive for local-thin which in my case is a mechanical drive.


They assume that you have a 2nd SSD devoted to the VM's / CT's. They are not taking into account that you personally have a HDD.
More important in your case is the access speed with the CT's / VM's (which are really server applications). The last thing you want is them reading and writing their operating system functions to a spinning hard drive. It is the equivalent of you removing your SSD from your PC and installing a HDD instead. That is not going to work out well for you and some application would be almost unusable. Use the 1TB HDD for movies, songs and documents etc, where the speed of access is not so important.

And as stated above, I see now only supports VM's and CT's.


I can't comment on that, as I don't have that setup anywhere in my lab. The fact that Proxmox can ONLY share that disk to it's own nodes and they can't be seen from another PC or server, makes the the setup limited. Share the disk via SMB or NFS, then it can be seen from anywhere on your networks and still be attached to Proxmox for use by the CT's / VM's.