Tasked with Proxmox optimization

[anyone21]

Hello Everyone,

My company just bought up another one and I'm tasked to optimize all the proxmoxservers (thank god they already use PXMOX) on their infrastruture.

So here's what I've got to work with

Host 1
Xeon E5-2680
128GB RAM
1TB SSD - OS Partition + Local-LVM
5TB SSD - Ext4 partition
Host 2
Xeon E5-2603
64GB RAM
200GB - Os Partition + Local-LVM
4TB - Ext4 Partition
Host 3
Xeon E5-2680
256GB Ram
2TB - Os Partition + Local-LVM
4TB - Ext4 Partition


They had some VM's across all hosts but regarding storage I'm a little worried it might not be the best solution.

I was thinking in replacing the Ext4 partitions with some CEPH so that I have replication among all and be able to migrate machines easily between them and have some HA.
However I've never worked with ceph and by what I've read it would be the best approach on this scenario.

Any recomendations or I'm on the right path?

Thanks in advance.

 

[dj423]

If your workloads can handle the performance hit of a ceph cluster, that is one option for sure, just make sure the 4TB drives will allow for future expansion.

FWIW: In most production clusters that host critical heavy I/O workloads, I usually go with a storage array of some type (SAN or NAS) with either ISCSI targets for max IOP's or NFS shares over bonded 10/100Gb+ nics. This keeps everything zippy performance wise, and live migrating instances takes less than a minute to move around with less overhead. Just something to consider.

 

[ness1602]

You didnt specify ssds models, i would like that before any recommendation about ceph.

 

[_gabriel]

5TB SSD - Ext4 partition

seems HW raid based, isn't recommended for Ceph.

NICs missing.

Ceph will slow down the whole.
Depends on workload, it can be too slow
+ even more slow with Xeon E5-2680 if v0, early 2012 released ( slow single thread cpubenchmark.net ~1500 points)

if I were you, I would keep the system as is.
Then, if not already done, install Proxmox Backup Server, with regular backups, as pseudo HA.

Perhaps PBS dedicated on the E5-2603.
if you know what you do, PBS can be installed alongside PVE to local backup VM to itself then Remote Sync between another host.