ZFS: proxmox as fileserver vs freenas

[fab26]

Hi,

I'm about to build a fileserver for a small vfx team. I was looking at zfs on freenas. but I'm also a happy proxmox user running various VMs (databases, rendering, dev...)

what are the pro and cons of using proxmox as a zfs fileserver and a vm hypervisor versus having a freenas zfs fileserver and a proxmox hypervisor on separate hardwares ?

Thanks for your advices,
F.

 

[Dominic]

proxmox as a zfs fileserver

Proxmox VE does not magically expose your ZFS filesystem to the network. You could create a guest in Proxmox VE on your ZFS filesystem and create a network share like Samba in there.

 

[fab26]

Hi Dominic, thanks for your answer

do I need to set-up a guest VM for sharing ?
I was thinking of sharing from the host, using NFS for sharing to the guests and samba for sharing to the rest of the network but maybe I'm wrong ?
For now we use a totally separate hardware for storage and I'm pretty noob at zfs on proxmox.

could you point me to a good tutorial on this ?

thanks,
Fab

 

[Dominic]

Hi,

sharing from the Proxmox VE host is possible, too. I personally to keep the host "clean". You should be able to find some discussions about this here in the forum.

could you point me to a good tutorial on this ?

The ZFS chapter in the Proxmox VE Administration Guide. You can even create ZFS setups in the GUI of Proxmox VE, by going on your node -> Disks -> ZFS.

 

[elurex]

you can install OMV5 in LXC and service as File Server and it take take advance of zfs as well

 

[fab26]

I ended with a zfs dataset shared by an ubuntu18 container thru samba. Looks like it's working.

Thanks for your help!