What drive configuration & FS for a home server using Proxmox and BTRFS (hopefully)

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vl1969

Active Member
Feb 5, 2014
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Thanks for response, I think I got the gist, can you let me know how do you setup and manage samba server?
This is one of my contentions, that I want a webui management I hate cli.
As for btrfs, the proxmoxve fully supports it, if raid 1 and 10 is production ready,raid 5 and 6 is not.
I have been using btrfs in stand alone and in raid 1 and raid 10 fine. What I like is that it is a lot more flexible with setting up raid and convert different raid level on the fly.

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Utking

New Member
Nov 12, 2016
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Hi all,

I'd love to run a Proxmox setup for my home server and really like the flexibility that BTRFS seems to offer for my personal files and media, but I know that BTRFS isn't great with VMs (by default) nor integrated into Proxmox. So I'm wondering whether I can do some sort of mix of ZFS and BTRFS and how to configure the drives.

1) Can I put Proxmox on a ZFS Raid 1 array of two drives, and then put all my data on a different BTRFS raid 1 array?

2) Should I install Proxmox on SSDs or HDDs? I understand that Proxmox does not run in memory so would kill a USB stick but I don't know if that also applies to SSDs.

3) Should I put my VMs/Containers on SSDs or HDDs? I think I read that performance is better if the VMs/containers are on SSDs.

4) Should I have a separate SSD for a ZFS cache?

5) Based on the answers above, what's my best drive configuration? My focus is getting the foundation set up right, so I don't mind buying a couple of extra drives now (SSDs or HDDs). But I would prefer to buy the disks for my data as and when required rather than trying to anticipate my future storage needs now, hence my strong preference for BTRFS over ZFS for my media & files. Also, I'm hoping to need only the 8 SATA ports on my MB rather than having to buy a controller. So I'm hoping I can get away with two ports for the OS (and VMs?) and have the other 6 for the data drives.

Hardware already owned:
CPU - Intel Xeon E3-1240 V5
MB - Supermicro X11SSM-F
Memory - 32GB DDR4 (comprising 2 * 16GB DDR 2133 sticks)
HDDs - 1 * 2TB WD Green, 1 * 3TB WD Red, 1 * 2TB Seagate​

Uses Currently planned (in various VMs/containers)
Media server (Plex, subsonic/MPD)
Media recorder (Mythtv/tvheadend)
Act as remote backup for family (Crashplan)
Create local backups to external drives (Crashplan)
Home security (zoneminder)
File server (Samba, Owncloud)​
Hey!

I was thinking of the excact same thing as you!

I have a dell c6100 though, with 4 nodes, currently only running two of them with 6 trays each, (I only have two drives in each)

Did you find out any way to forward your storage to proxmox though? :)
 

el_pedr0

Member
Sep 6, 2016
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@vl1969 Totally agree on the attractions of BTRFS. But a good example of why I was spooked was that Raid 5/6 had been considered stable and then suddenly a bug was found. I don't (nor have the inclination to) follow any mailing lists etc, so would have been completely oblivious to this had my server already been up and running.

I only dabble in this stuff, so I tend to write notes to help me remember/troubleshoot how I set things up. I'll try to pull the Samba stuff later. But for now, it's super easy to manage with Webmin. Just a load of different options to get your head around in the first place, particularly if you want to maintain a solid unix permissioning strategy.
 

el_pedr0

Member
Sep 6, 2016
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@Ukting I went for ZFS in the end. Many of the comments in this thread pushed me that way. With ZFS it's kinda integrated into Proxmox. The only downside is the limit of 9 bind mounts per container/vm and you can't traverse any child bind mounts from a parent bind mount. So I ended up setting up a Samba server on the proxmox host.
 

TuxDude

Well-Known Member
Sep 17, 2011
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@vl1969 Totally agree on the attractions of BTRFS. But a good example of why I was spooked was that Raid 5/6 had been considered stable and then suddenly a bug was found. I don't (nor have the inclination to) follow any mailing lists etc, so would have been completely oblivious to this had my server already been up and running.
I don't think the RAID 5/6 BTRFS code had ever been stated as being stable or reliable, at least not by any of the dev's working on it (I hope not by me anywhere, as I am a big fan of BTRFS). A few kernel versions ago it was stated as finally being "complete", which meant all of the features had finally been implemented - for a long time it would calculate and write parity but couldn't use the parity to repair/rebuild, and so was really just a slower RAID-0. But that statement also came with the usual warnings that it was brand-new untested code - the general recommendation for that kind of thing for regular users is to wait another 3 or 4 kernel versions to let the bugs get ironed out.

I'm somewhat behind right now on following the RAID 5/6 progress on the mailing list, so I'm afraid I can't say much about its current status - except that if you are running it you probably shouldn't be yet (though it is safe to online-convert to raid-1 if you have the capacity), and that in the future when it is mature/stable/reliable if you are on BTRFS now you will be able to online-convert to it when that time comes.
 

vl1969

Active Member
Feb 5, 2014
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I don't think the RAID 5/6 BTRFS code had ever been stated as being stable or reliable, at least not by any of the dev's working on it (I hope not by me anywhere, as I am a big fan of BTRFS). A few kernel versions ago it was stated as finally being "complete", which meant all of the features had finally been implemented - for a long time it would calculate and write parity but couldn't use the parity to repair/rebuild, and so was really just a slower RAID-0. But that statement also came with the usual warnings that it was brand-new untested code - the general recommendation for that kind of thing for regular users is to wait another 3 or 4 kernel versions to let the bugs get ironed out.

I'm somewhat behind right now on following the RAID 5/6 progress on the mailing list, so I'm afraid I can't say much about its current status - except that if you are running it you probably shouldn't be yet (though it is safe to online-convert to raid-1 if you have the capacity), and that in the future when it is mature/stable/reliable if you are on BTRFS now you will be able to online-convert to it when that time comes.
nope, raid-5/6 never left testing/dev stage as far as I know.
I have been using raid-1 and 10 for a bit.
 

el_pedr0

Member
Sep 6, 2016
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:eek: . And there's an even better example why I probably shouldn't go near BTRFS at the mo. I can't even distinguish the official status from unqualified claims of "yeah, Raid 5/6 is great".

Nevertheless, as hinted at in my original post, I love the promise of BTRFS so would be really interested to hear your progress down the road.
 

TuxDude

Well-Known Member
Sep 17, 2011
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I'm currently using BTRFS all over the place, in single-device, and multi-device (raid-1, 2 or 4 drives) configurations. And a single 3-device BTRFS raid-5, knowing its rather experimental (its been running since before the code was feature-complete), and not containing any data that I can't stand losing. I like the filesystem, and have high hopes for its future.
 

el_pedr0

Member
Sep 6, 2016
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@vl1969 Here are my Samba and Webmin instructions if it's of any help. They were never intended for anyone else though so I provide no assurance whatsoever that they are fit for purpose.

They are also derived from others' work - but I no longer remember where I copied stuff from so cannot credit the sources.
 

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vl1969

Active Member
Feb 5, 2014
634
76
28
@vl1969 Here are my Samba and Webmin instructions if it's of any help. They were never intended for anyone else though so I provide no assurance whatsoever that they are fit for purpose.

They are also derived from others' work - but I no longer remember where I copied stuff from so cannot credit the sources.
thanks, will look over them as soon as I can.


PS>> I don't want to hijack the thread or anything like it , but can I get people opinion on storage configuration. for my Proxmox setup.

NOTE: my setup is a single server with all drives on board.

I am looking over 2 options

option 1. Get the Proxmox going with system(Proxmox) install on 2 SSDs using ZFS raid-1
add my data drives using a single BTRFS RAID-10 pool as local storage.
want to use BTRFS as it works with mixed size drives in single pool setup just fine.+
build out an OMV VM for file server using virtual drives (i.e. the actual file server will be using VHD files and all data will be there and all data will be backed up to external USB drive.)
have a SAMBA and NFS shares to present all files to outside world, all VM and physical machines on network.


Option 2 setup Proxmox as Option 1 but create an OMV VM and passthrough the real drives into that to be managed by OMV. rest is the same.


my main needs for the storage drives setup are, easy config and management.
I guess setting up a raid-10 BTRFS pool is not a big issue and for a wile it will just run , no management needed. adding or replacement of the drives is not too difficult either,
how ever I also need a good monitoring of the drives for failure and timely notification if something gone wrong.

what is the best option to take?