ZFS Setup not working as intended

[yomamasnerd]

Hey guys,
I'm fairly new to proxmox and setup a proxmox ve instance based on a tutorial.
My Server is running 3 x 1 TB SSDs and 3 x 4 TB HDDs. To get the most out of them i thought that setting them up as ZFS pool would be a smart idea. I mounted both the HDD and SSD pools as directories to use them as backup and performance storage, respectively.
However I just figured out that snapshots for backups aren't supported when the storage is mounted as a directory and i was wondering if there are any drawbacks when mounting the fast SSD pool as ZFS (over the gui) instead of as dir.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[UdoB]

3 x 1 TB SSDs and 3 x 4 TB HDDs.

You could have build a tripple mirror from the HDDs and a add a the SSDs in a tripple mirror as a so called "Special Device", post installation.

You may describe your goals and budget to get another advice - there is no "one recommendation fits all", neither in a professional area nor at home.

To know what you actually have now: what gives zpool status?

mounted both the HDD and SSD pools as directories

That's plainly... wrong - at least in 99% of all situations when the installation is already on ZFS.

Use ZVOLs for VMs and Datasets for Container. Both are ZFS internal mechanism optimized for those tasks. "Directories" is for cases where a block device is not feasible, e.g. NFS.

The default installation does exactly this. There is "local" for Containers (and for .iso-Images) and there is "local-zfs" for virtual disks for VMs.

PS: did you read https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-pvesm.html ?

 

[yomamasnerd]

You could have build a tripple mirror from the HDDs and a add a the SSDs in a tripple mirror as a so called "Special Device", post installation.

If I've done it this way the backup with proxmox gui to a local HDD would have been not needed?

# zpool status
  pool: BigStorage
 state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub repaired 0B in 01:15:04 with 0 errors on Sun Nov 10 01:39:05 2024
config:

    NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
    BigStorage  ONLINE       0     0     0
      raidz1-0  ONLINE       0     0     0
        sda     ONLINE       0     0     0
        sdb     ONLINE       0     0     0
        sdc     ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

  pool: FastStorage
 state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub repaired 0B in 00:01:42 with 0 errors on Sun Nov 10 00:25:46 2024
config:

    NAME         STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
    FastStorage  ONLINE       0     0     0
      raidz1-0   ONLINE       0     0     0
        sdd      ONLINE       0     0     0
        sde      ONLINE       0     0     0
        sdf      ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

My goal with my setup is just to have something to play with. I'm hosting a few services myself nothing critical however. It's a setup to learn as I go.

That's plainly... wrong - at least in 99% of all situations when the installation is already on ZFS.

How would I backup with the proxmox GUI when using ZFS since ZFS does not support the backup 'tag'.

PS: did you read https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-pvesm.html

Just read it yesterday, that is how I found out that my mount zfs as dir couldn't be the right way.