Storage configuration help

[onlysli]

Hello,
I have questions about how to configure the disks in Proxmox.
I have a 4TB HDDs in a hardware raid 6 configuration giving a total 16TB.
In Proxmox I see a single 16TB disk.
My questiona are:
- should I use the full 16TB to create a LVM-thin or should split the disk in smaller partitions, let's say 2 partitons of 8TB?
- if a split the disk in 2 partitions, one for VMs and one as a normal Linux filesystem to store backups, will it impact performance? since this is HW raid?

Thank you.

 

[Lukas Wagner]

My questiona are:
- should I use the full 16TB to create a LVM-thin or should split the disk in smaller partitions, let's say 2 partitons of 8TB?
- if a split the disk in 2 partitions, one for VMs and one as a normal Linux filesystem to store backups, will it impact performance? since this is HW raid?

I guess this fully depends on your needs and should not affect performance in any perceivable way. If you need additional space with a normal filesystem on it, then the second partition would make sense. Note that you can also just give the full 16 TB to LVM and create a LV in it manually that will contain your file system [1]. You would need to mount this LV manually via an entry in fstab and create a new 'Directory Storage' for it. AFAIK the GUI only allows adding whole disks/partitions as directory storage, so you would need to use the pvesm command to add it [2].

As a side note: A backup on the same host is not really a backup, I would say

[1] https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_(LVM)
[2] https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pvesm.1.html

 

[onlysli]

I guess this fully depends on your needs and should not affect performance in any perceivable way. If you need additional space with a normal filesystem on it, then the second partition would make sense. Note that you can also just give the full 16 TB to LVM and create a LV in it manually that will contain your file system [1]. You would need to mount this LV manually via an entry in fstab and create a new 'Directory Storage' for it. AFAIK the GUI only allows adding whole disks/partitions as directory storage, so you would need to use the pvesm command to add it [2].

As a side note: A backup on the same host is not really a backup, I would say

[1] https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_(LVM)
[2] https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pvesm.1.html

Thank you.
I'll go with full 16TB LVM then.

Regarding backups on same host, I was thinking just as a protection if something goes bad inside any of the VMs, to have a quick restore. Of course, important stuff will be backed up on different location.