Storage recomendations

[lluisclava]

Hi,

I am new in proxmox and I amb looking for your recomendations about storage configuracions.

I have a server IBM system x3400 m3 with windows server and I am planning to virtualize it with proxmox. The current storage of the server is 4x300GB SAS disk with Raid 1 + 0.

I want to apply the best practises (as I have understood it so far) with storage so I want to use a diferent storage for proxmox, ZIL cache and virtual machines. So my plan is to get 2xSSD discs with hard raid for proxmos os and ZIL cache and then 2x2TB SAS disk with ZFS for Virtual Machines.

Is this a correct configuration? Is this the best option? Could I reuse old disks for something?

Thanks in advance!

Lluís Clavaguera

 

[Dominic]

How much RAM do you have?

 

[lluisclava]

How much RAM do you have?

32 GB of RAM

 

[Dominic]

32 GB of RAM

That is a start. Depending on what you do with your VM and how you configure ZFS you might want to get more. You could take a look at our Ceph benchmark to see what you can expect from different types of disks.

2xSSD discs with hard raid for proxmos os

You could also do ZFS mirror.

Could I reuse old disks for something?

Backups?

 

[lluisclava]

That is a start. Depending on what you do with your VM and how you configure ZFS you might want to get more. You could take a look at our Ceph benchmark to see what you can expect from different types of disks.

You could also do ZFS mirror.

Backups?

The current Windows server is using in working hours just 4,7 GB of RAM so I think the RAM it's not going to be a problem.

My plan is not to use Ceph at the moment, because I only have 1 server, maybe 2 in the future. So I'm just planning to do ZFS replication from one node to other in the future.

About disks in general,
Do you think to use raid hardware ssd disks for proxmox and ZIL and 2x sas hd disks with zfs for virtual machines is it the best solution?
I think (I don't know if I'm right) to use hardware raid for proxmox and ZIL and not ZFS, could have a better performance and could freeup resources of the server to leave it to virtuals machines. Isn't it?
And do you think is a good solution to have ZIL in the same disks of proxmox is a food solution??

Thanks so much!

 

[spaxxilein]

The current Windows server is using in working hours just 4,7 GB of RAM so I think the RAM it's not going to be a problem.

My plan is not to use Ceph at the moment, because I only have 1 server, maybe 2 in the future. So I'm just planning to do ZFS replication from one node to other in the future.

About disks in general,
Do you think to use raid hardware ssd disks for proxmox and ZIL and 2x sas hd disks with zfs for virtual machines is it the best solution?
I think (I don't know if I'm right) to use hardware raid for proxmox and ZIL and not ZFS, could have a better performance and could freeup resources of the server to leave it to virtuals machines. Isn't it?
And do you think is a good solution to have ZIL in the same disks of proxmox is a food solution??

Thanks so much!

You cannot compare NTFS / FAT32 to ZFS. ZFS by design needs RAM - much more RAM than NTFS / FAT32 needs.

If you use HW-raid controller instead of ZFS-based RaidZs you will have less memory requirement. Altough you are missing the feautures of ZFS. It is not suggested but possible to use a partition of the boot drive for ZIL.

I would suggest getting a small SSD to run Proxmox, to make it independent from the VMs.

In the past i had issues when for some reasons a VM uses all the availible IOPS, Proxmox crashed, because its on the same physical harddrive.

 

[lluisclava]

Yes of course I amb not comparing NTFS/FAT32/Ext4 with ZFS.

But, for proxmox OS and ZIL, I understand it's not necessari ZFS. So it will be better perfomrance with small SSD with 2 partitions for Proxmox OS and ZIL, and 2x SAS HD with ZFS for Virtual Machines.

Thanks for recommendations.

 

[spaxxilein]

Yes of course I amb not comparing NTFS/FAT32/Ext4 with ZFS.

But, for proxmox OS and ZIL, I understand it's not necessari ZFS. So it will be better perfomrance with small SSD with 2 partitions for Proxmox OS and ZIL, and 2x SAS HD with ZFS for Virtual Machines.

Thanks for recommendations.

My suggestion for you after i have tried to make HDD + VMs working: dont use VMs on HDD. I tried RaidZ2 with 6x6GB HDD, got unacceptable IOPS. Just get SSDs in RaidZ for VMs, you wont be happy otherwise. This is just my personal experience.

 

[lluisclava]

My suggestion for you after i have tried to make HDD + VMs working: dont use VMs on HDD. I tried RaidZ2 with 6x6GB HDD, got unacceptable IOPS. Just get SSDs in RaidZ for VMs, you wont be happy otherwise. This is just my personal experience.

But what kind of acceptable IOPS are you talking? I only need to have a simple Windows server virtual machine with a database and CIFs services.... for about 20 users simultaenous working, and maybe a couple of linux vms for other small services...

Thanks everbody for aswering my questins.

 

[spaxxilein]

But what kind of acceptable IOPS are you talking? I only need to have a simple Windows server virtual machine with a database and CIFs services.... for about 20 users simultaenous working, and maybe a couple of linux vms for other small services...

Thanks everbody for aswering my questins.

If you want to try, just try it on a HDD-Pool, if thats not working for (as it did not work for us in acceptable speed), you can just move the images to your SSD-pool.