Tips for building proxmox servers

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

vl1969

Active Member
Feb 5, 2014
634
76
28
the reason I asked is that I am currently in the process of choosing what to do with my home server.
I am running OMV as OS right now, but OMV + Vbox is not as stable as I would like.
so I want to get a good solid HV and run OMV on it.
Biggest issue is any Hypervisor I try does not have a good disk management in it.

I want a nice UI, preferably WebUI, to manage the VMs and local system.
I only have one server so it has to pull double duty, a VM server and File server
I have 2x120GB SSD for OS
and a mix of 1TB,2TB,3TB drives for data
my plan is to run OS on raid-1 SSDs for stability and uptime.
and share out the data drives for all VM and real PC clients using NFS and SAMBA.


so far I have checked out several and can not decide what would be the best option.

#1. I played with Proxmox.
nice and easy, but no local resource management. have to use CLI or install WebMin
and manage the data disks in WebMin.
OR pass through the data disk to OMV VM either as raw disks or PCI whole controller.

#2. ESXi 6 free, nice free webUI, however same as above but passthrough is mandatory as ESXi simply can not give me options of on host management as Proxmox does.

#3. XenServer 7 . similar to ESXi but e bit complicated to manage. as needs a windows PC for vCenter.
xen orchestra is a nice try but simply can not figure out how to set it up so it works.
also no passthrough support.

so still can not decide what to do.
I guess Xen is out as I might need passthrough support.
but what is better ESXi or Proxmox for Free versions I astil debate :)
 

MiniKnight

Well-Known Member
Mar 30, 2012
3,072
973
113
NYC
@vl1969 Most things you can do from the proxmox web mgmt. Once you've got minimal ZFS config done no real need for another zfs server.
 

rickygm

New Member
Jan 18, 2017
7
0
1
44
Yep. I've been migrating a bunch of production servers from ESXi to Proxmox, and ditching hardware RAID in favor of ZFS. Proxmox is installed on two small SSDs in a ZFS mirror, with big SSDs in RAID 10 for VMs, making storage maintenance ridiculously easy. I'm even running Proxmox on my SMB/NFS storage servers, still with all of my storage drives in ZFS RAID 10, and let me tell you, life is good.
Hi , you don't have a San o nas for shared storage and put Ha on cluster?


Enviado desde mi iPad utilizando Tapatalk Pro
 

vl1969

Active Member
Feb 5, 2014
634
76
28
@vl1969 Most things you can do from the proxmox web mgmt. Once you've got minimal ZFS config done no real need for another zfs server.
unfortunately ZFS for data disks is not feasible.
as I point out earlier, I have a bunch of disks with different sizes and speeds , ZFS will not let me build a reliable config from them.
I was thinking of ZFS for OS only (2x120GB SSD on ZFS raid-1)
and BTRFS raid-10 pool from the rest of the disks. and that is not supported.

maybe just pass them to OMV VM and manage it from there.
decisions, decisions.
 

ttabbal

Active Member
Mar 10, 2016
743
207
43
47
unfortunately ZFS for data disks is not feasible.
as I point out earlier, I have a bunch of disks with different sizes and speeds , ZFS will not let me build a reliable config from them.

Sure you can, but probably not in the way you want to. Each vdev would be limited by the smallest disk in the vdev, resulting in wasted space. If you have pairs of similar size drives, you can add those as mirrors and ZFS will happily stripe across them all. My config looks like this..

1x 6TB mirror
2x 4TB mirror
7x 2TB mirror

Is it ideal? No, probably not. Is it good enough for my home stuff, absolutely.
 

vl1969

Active Member
Feb 5, 2014
634
76
28
thank, i will think about it.
I like using BTRFS because I know it, and it is allowing me to work with my drives in the way I want to ,without loosing space.
also my server is old, not sure how it will work with ZFS. I only have 49GB of RAM on it.
I should have a total of roughly 8TB of space right now. maybe 10TB of space with all my drives.
only use about 4TB total.
 

ttabbal

Active Member
Mar 10, 2016
743
207
43
47
Contrary to popular opinion, ZFS isn't that resource hungry. Your server will run it fine if it can address 49GB. I wouldn't recommend it on really low RAM boxes, 4GB or so, but otherwise it will probably work fine.

There's nothing wrong with using what you like. I just didn't want you to rule something out based on bad info.
 

vl1969

Active Member
Feb 5, 2014
634
76
28
thanks, yes my server can handle up to 128GB if I am willing to spend that kind of money.
it's and old ddr2 ram, so 8GB chips are expensive even if you could find them nowadays.
I got a huge deal on 4GB chips 5 years back. but now , forget it. :)
 

ttabbal

Active Member
Mar 10, 2016
743
207
43
47
Yeah, larger DDR2 prices suck. Too rare. My DDR3 server is similar with 98GB. It's enough for now. By the time I really need more, DDR4 prices should start coming down. :)
 

TuxDude

Well-Known Member
Sep 17, 2011
616
338
63
I should have a total of roughly 8TB of space right now. maybe 10TB of space with all my drives.
only use about 4TB total.
There is a calculator here where you can enter what disks you have and the type of raid you will be running with BTRFS, and it will tell you how much usable space you should expect to get. It takes into account how BTRFS distributes data across unevenly sized disks.
 

vl1969

Active Member
Feb 5, 2014
634
76
28
Thanks, I was giving estimation because I simply don't remember exactly how many drives an what sizes I have at the moment. I need to replace one 2tb as it failing so probably will go with 3 or 4 tb

Sent from my SM-N910T using Tapatalk