ZFS NAS/Distro for use with ProxMox?

[blackpaw]

I'm considering setting up a custom dedicated shared storage NAS using iscsi/ZFS so as to integrate with the ZFS over iSCSI storage solution in Proxmox.

Is there a recommended distro for this? FreeNAS or some such? does the choice of iSCSI matter? (Comstar/istgt/IET).

One of the things I'd like to have the NAS do is replicate itself to a backup server.

Thanks.

Edit: I'd give it around 8GB of ram, would a Celeron or i3 CPU be sufficient? looking at serving up 20 VM's

 

[mir]

Distro: Omnios

These are the specs for my coming storage box:
CPU: i3-4170T
RAM: Kingston 8GB ECC KVR16E11 x 2 (16GB)
MB: Asrock E3C224 (I also considered Supermicro A1SRM-2558F but lacks enough PCIe)

 

[blackpaw]

Thanks mir

 

[David Calvache Casas]

What about Freenas?

Im setting a lab machine, but i´m having troubles with iscsi.

Anybody has a working freenas with iscsi linked to the last proxmox?

 

[manu]

FreeNAS is an option ( I use with iscsi and it works)
But OmniOS has been much more battle tested with PVE, especially if you do iscsi.

Also please read: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Storage:_ZFS_over_iSCSI

 

[David Calvache Casas]

FreeNAS is an option ( I use with iscsi and it works)
But OmniOS has been much more battle tested with PVE, especially if you do iscsi.

Also please read: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Storage:_ZFS_over_iSCSI

I know,

But i must try to connect to a FREENAS 9.3, its the only option i have. Here my job mates build a big Freenas two months ago. I i can´t dismantle this now.

With LVM-ISCSI, there is a problem losing the connection and reseting then, with an interval of 10 seconds. The connections spams the log of freenas with the message " ctld continually exits - read connection lost"
This was discussed here : http://forum.proxmox.com/threads/21205-iSCSI-Reconnecting-every-10-seconds-to-FreeNAS-solution and here https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/7891

People using OSX have a similar problem http://www.snsforums.com/index.php?showtopic=675


Reading a lot, i finished here, http://forum.proxmox.com/threads/20070-Proxmox-VE-3-3-and-Freenas-9-2-7-ZFS-via-ISCSI
where MIR helps another guy with Freenas 9.2.7 (but that build version was ISTGT), and seems that ZFS plugin do not implements the right commands to drive the target. (Comstar.pm Iet.pm Istgt.pm) (im a noob at this)
Using any of them do not work. The sintax do no match with ctladm commands.


Can any angel help here?



Sorry for my English. (i´m not a native english speaker)

 

[mir]

There are two important limitations in FreeNAS which make it unsuitable for Proxmox iSCSI use:
1) CTL has a hard coded number of supported LUN's (256 targets and 1024 LUN). Number of targets is the crucial limit for proxmox since each LUN is having a dedicated target. (https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/maximum-number-of-iscsi-targets-in-freebsd10.45857/)
2) FreeNAS maintains configuration internally and there is no public API to this. This means changes made with ctladm does not propagate to FreeNAS. Also changes made in FreeNAS overwrite changes made by ctladm.

The last limitation is a show stopper.

 

[fireon]

We have tested a lot of things in a long testingtime. With both systems: Freenas and nas4free. Nas4free was much better. Newer and stable features, easyier to work with it. Freenas hangs on much diskload/IO, had kernel panic and so on. With nas4free we does not hat any of this problems. And yes, we build server hardware with an real SAS controller from IBM, that is 100% ZFS compatible.

This time we use for all things proxmox. For PVE for Backup and for Storage. It was the easiest way. Every system is the same. ZFS on CMD is easy to use. And when you have an HW Raidcontroller it is with ext filesystem also ok. So, why not...