Storage types

[ksl28]

Hi,

Been playing around with Proxmox for the last few days, as an replacement for VMware on my homelab. So far everything seems to be mostly straight forward, and the performance is fine. But im struggling to better understand, what type of storage to use...

I got 2 nodes, that each have 2 x 2TB NVMe disks in them. I want to achieve the following:
1. Get the maximum amount of space available = no software raid
2. Use thin provisioned disks
3. Achieve the most ease of use

Based on this post (https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-pvesm.html), it seems that directories is the right choice for me - is that correct?
And if i place VM disks in a directory with the qcow2 format, i will still be able to do snapshots and default use thin provisioned disks - correct?

 

[abufrejoval]

If you're happy without redundancy and those two system are mostly there because one wasn't big enough, I suggest you just go with ZFS on both and stripe 0.

You can still do cross-backups of stuff that's really important and you can even set up ZFS forwarding later and again for stuff that turns out more critical than you initially thought.

Thin provisioning is mostly a choice at VM creation so just make sure to use it then, but be careful to monitor actual use. Again ZFS directories is a good base and snapshots are efficient.

 

[ksl28]

If you're happy without redundancy and those two system are mostly there because one wasn't big enough, I suggest you just go with ZFS on both and stripe 0.

You can still do cross-backups of stuff that's really important and you can even set up ZFS forwarding later and again for stuff that turns out more critical than you initially thought.

Thin provisioning is mostly a choice at VM creation so just make sure to use it then, but be careful to monitor actual use. Again ZFS directories is a good base and snapshots are efficient.

Thanks for the reply.
To me it looks like Directories is the best choice, since i can also store .ISO images here = i can use the same storage, for several items

Why is ZFS better in this case? Dedup, performance, etc?
So if i just create a VM with qcow2 format, the disks are then thin provisioned by default?