[SOLVED] Windows 10 VM and Single Drive Passthrough

[IronSheepdog]

This is my first post here so please be gentle. I'm very new to Proxmox. I was a TrueNAS fanboy, but have decided to switch to Proxmox because of how well it handles containers and VMs. So, I have a Dell Poweredge R720 with the H310 controller in IT mode. In a nutshell, I have four WD red 4TB NAS drives setup in a RAIDZ2 in a TrueNAS Scale VM. I had the controller passed through to the VM so that TrueNAS could handle the ZFS with the four drives. With that, I have network shares (SMB) on my network and it works well for what I need it for.

I am going to install Windows 10 in a VM and have it only run Blue Iris for my eight cameras. I just purchased a 2TB purple WD drive for video storage. There are options with my setup and I'm not really sure what is best. Since the WD purple drive will be in one of the eight slots on the server, it will be on the H310. That means TrueNAS will see the drive. Obviously, if I don't do anything with it in TrueNAS, TrueNAS has no control over it. So, here are my choices/ideas:
1. Have TrueNAS add the drive as a single drive pool and run a network share (SMB) for the Windows 10 VM to use for video storage.
2. Have Proxmox have control over the drive and pass the drive through to the Windows 10 VM and have it appear as a second hard drive for video storage.
3. Have Proxmox have control over the drive and install the Windows 10 VM to the drive and and use it exclusively for the VM.

Notes: With #1, I'm concerned about bogging my network down with constant video recording going to the network share. With #2, I'm assuming this isn't a problem? With #3, this may be the better/best option? With this VM, I'm not concerned about needing a RAID array or anything. If the drive should ever fail, no big deal. It's just video footage from around my house.

 

[apoc]

Since the WD purple drive will be in one of the eight slots on the server, it will be on the H310. That means TrueNAS will see the drive. Obviously, if I don't do anything with it in TrueNAS, TrueNAS has no control over it

I think this is a misconception.
If you have passed through your controller to truenas (as I understood) then there is no way to use it outside that VM except if you do so via a share.

1. Have TrueNAS add the drive as a single drive pool and run a network share (SMB) for the Windows 10 VM to use for video storage.

So technical this is your only option from my perspective.

Notes: With #1, I'm concerned about bogging my network down with constant video recording going to the network share

Assuming the windows and your truenas machine are on the same subnet: What happens here should be mostly be in-memory network traffic. This will eat some CPU cycles for sure, but should not be as bad as with physical machines.

So try and see if it works. If not you need to rethink on a larger scale IMHO.

 

[IronSheepdog]

I think this is a misconception.
If you have passed through your controller to truenas (as I understood) then there is no way to use it outside that VM except if you do so via a share.

Well that sucks. So, if I pass something through to a VM, it can't be used anywhere else? This includes USB devices, etc? I only ask because I haven't tried it, yet.

Also, I see that many others have not recommended this, but people have just passed the disks themselves through to a TrueNAS VM because they were unable to pass a controller through. If I can get away with that, then it opens my options back up. If that is the case, then which would you recommend?

 

[apoc]

Well that sucks. So, if I pass something through to a VM, it can't be used anywhere else? This includes USB devices, etc? I only ask because I haven't tried it, yet.

Yep. It is as it would be physically connected to one host (which is a VM).

Also, I see that many others have not recommended this, but people have just passed the disks themselves through to a TrueNAS VM because they were unable to pass a controller through.

That can work. I have no experience with truenas. In this case the disks are not 100% passed through. These are "mapped" into the guest. So no smart values are accessible for instance. There is another thread which is discussing this right now:
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/passing-through-hdds-with-qm-set-command.106106/

HTH

 

[IronSheepdog]

Yep. It is as it would be physically connected to one host (which is a VM).



That can work. I have no experience with truenas. In this case the disks are not 100% passed through. These are "mapped" into the guest. So no smart values are accessible for instance. There is another thread which is discussing this right now:
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/passing-through-hdds-with-qm-set-command.106106/

HTH

Thank you for that info. I used TrueNAS before purchasing the Dell Poweredge R720. I put Proxmox on the new server and love it. But, I also love TrueNAS and how it handled the drives, shares and online (Google Drive) backup. It sounds like I may have abandon TrueNAS and find another solution for a NAS, network shares and Google Drive backup.
If I can do it all through Proxmox and still get the features I want, I would. TrueNAS is a pretty powerful VM and it would cut down on resources.