Use Proxmox for storage and Linux VM for share and plex

LiquidAurum

New Member
May 18, 2018
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I have a server with 3 Hard drives (2x750GB and 1 4TB). I was wondering if I could make a storage pool of all 3 disks, run a small linux vm on it, and then have the SMB share use the proxmox storage DIRECTLY.
 
Where is proxmox installed?
What the target for share vm OS?

If all disks are free,
You can do a zfs pool on host(proxmox)
Than crate a container lxc , not full vm.
With one small disk for os only.
I usually use like 10gb for system disk.
Install your is on it.
Shut it down
Bind mount the zfs pool you created into the container.
When you boot the new disk should be available in the vmc and you can use it for any thing.

One caviet thought. You may need to force create the same users and groups on both vm and host to have same permission rules. I have seen in the past that some files give issues. But most of the time all works well.

I am currently rebuilding a host with emby server and deluge VMs using this setup.
 
Proxmox is installed direclty on the server. I'm planning on an xubuntu server for the VM that runs plex and the SMB share. So when I bind mount the zfs pool to the container will it act as say a /dev/sdb partition that I can mount on say /mnt ? Also any easy to follow documentation on hot do do the bind mount? I'm not super familiar with servers/virtualization so I am learning.

Thanks
 
Yes it acts like an actual mounted volume. You tell where it will mount and it just appear there.
Just search for bind-mount on the forum. If I have time I will try to hunt down my notes and give you the code you put into container config.
I find it is easier to do that by editing the actual config file rather than gui.
 
Yes it acts like an actual mounted volume. You tell where it will mount and it just appear there.
Just search for bind-mount on the forum. If I have time I will try to hunt down my notes and give you the code you put into container config.
I find it is easier to do that by editing the actual config file rather than gui.

So just so I have this understood I have the 2x750 GB hard drives and the 4 TB hard drive. I will make them all into one ZFS pool. Then I can make say a 10 GB Container (not a VM) for my ubuntu server. With that done I will have the 5.5 TB ZFS pool that I can bind mount on the server right? As someone who's never done a container or bind how does that work? what part of the zfs pool will I be mounting? WIll I be seeing the entire root partition or say the /mnt/share partition. And when I add another Hard Drive to the server I understand I can add directly to the pool no problem will I have to do anything to the ubuntu server container?
 
First thing first, do not put mix drives into pool.
While it maybe possible it is a bad bad thing.

Second decide what kind of pool you will be using.
Mirror
RaidZ
Etk...
If you want some data protection mirror or raidZ
If this is for playing only. Just to try things out raid0 will do.

But do not mix drives. Of you want mirror pool you need second 4tb disk.
Than you create 2 vdevs one with 3 x 750 and one with 2 x 4tb.

Google zfs multi vdevs create
Vdevs acts as a volume that can have several disks in specified raid level in it. Zfs than pools all of that together.
A word of caution. You can not shrink vdevs. And when using mixed disk you get the same of smallest disk size in space calculations.
 
Sorry I'm a little confused you said first you can't mix drives into a pool right. But then towards the bottom you said to create 2 vdevs one with the 2x750 GB and the other with 2x4 TB hard drive. Do you mean to then create 2 ZFS pools one for 2x750 GB and one for 2x4 TB? Since I don't really understand how ZFS works if I have 2 ZFS pools or even just the one, will I be mounting it as almost like a SMB share on the ubuntu container?
 
Sorry I mean it is not advisable to mix drives but if you really need to do it there are some caviet and limitations to it.
One thing is you can not mix drives in vdevs. Each vdev need to have a set of the same disks or partitions.
You can have different size vdevs but you can run into an issue down the road as zfs pools are not easily resized. So once you have add vdev to the pool you stuck with it size until all vdevs are upgraded.that is let say you have 8 1tb disks. If you do a mirrored setup splitting them into 4 2disk vdevs for a total of 4tb and then later want to use 2tb or 3tb disks. You will loose the additional space on new drives until all disks in existing vdevs are of the same size.
With mirror pools it is some less of a hustle as mirror is more forgiving but in raidZ raid2 or other it can be a big issue. I have seen boards discussing this very thing. Some one had pool built out on 1tb disks and wanted to add 4tb disks but couldn't figure out why he was loosing space he expected to see.
 

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