zvol, nfs or iscsi?

[Mattias Hedman]

I am setting a my new proxmox server, I have a 14 Tb zpool and I want the coming VMs and CTs to use it.
But what is the best way giving the VMs and CTs access to the zpool?

 

[Dunuin]

I am setting a my new proxmox server, I have a 14 Tb zpool and I want the coming VMs and CTs to use it.
But what is the best way giving the VMs and CTs access to the zpool?

For LXCs I would use bind-mounts. See here: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Unprivileged_LXC_containers
For VMs I would use NFS/CIFS, because with iSCSI or zvols your VMs couldn't access/share the same data.
A good way to setup a NFS/SMB server would be to create a LXC, setup NFS/SMB server in it and then bind-mount the datasets you want to share from the host to the LXC where the LXC then could share them using NFS/SMB to the VMs.

 

[Mattias Hedman]

For LXCs I would use bind-mounts. See here: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Unprivileged_LXC_containers
For VMs I would use NFS/CIFS, because with iSCSI or zvols your VMs couldn't access/share the same data.
A good way to setup a NFS/SMB server would be to create a LXC, setup NFS/SMB server in it and then bind-mount the datasets you want to share from the host to the LXC where the LXC then could share them using NFS/SMB to the VMs.

Awesome thanks! Will follow your advice!

 

[Mattias Hedman]

But... when setting this up. Should I use the nfs-kernel-server or zfs built in nfs-sharing? What gives the most performance?

 

[jasonhh]

But... when setting this up. Should I use the nfs-kernel-server or zfs built in nfs-sharing? What gives the most performance?

I'm not aware of a performance difference, and I'm fairly certain it wouldn't be significant. NFS from ZFS still uses the same stuff, the biggest difference is if you configure and manage it from zfs commands or from traditional NFS config.

In my experience with the ZFS built in CIFS/SMB, the ZFS version was simpler, but had less options available. I'm not sure if the same applies for NFS.