as the subj. says, can it be done and how?
I have been planning to rebuild my home server with Proxmox VE 4.4
but as I have a single server, hardware wise, I need it to be a VM server AND a file server.
reading up on ZFS lead me to conclusion that while it is a nice robust FS it has it's issues.
for example, I have a bunch of spinners of different size in my setup.
a few 3T a few 2T a couple of 1T. to day I use OMV with BTRFS on all of them
and SnapRaid+MergerFS.
if I read correctly, I can build a ZFS pool using all of this drives by separating them into bunch of vDevs according to size and pooling the vdevs into zpool.
so as I have 4x3TB and 6x2TB and 2x1TB disks
I can do "zpool create -f tank mirror /dev/sd(3tb1) /dev/sd(3tb2) mirror /dev/sd(3tb3) /dev/sd(3tb4)
mirror /dev/sd(2tb1) /dev/sd(2tb2) ... mirror /dev/sd(2tb6) mirror /dev/sd(1tb1) /dev/sd(1tb2)"
which should give be 3+3+2+2+2+1 = 13TB zpool with 6 mirrored vdevs
NOTE: this is a file server data only. the proxmox and all vm stuff will be on zfs raid1 on a pair of 120GB or 240GB SSD (I simply do not remeber what are the system drives I use today.)
maybe I use the 1TB disks as raid1 zpool for additional system storage and backup space, if current ssds are 120GB so let say 12TB total in data space.
based on everything I read so far it seams that if I build the zfs pool as mentioned above, if I loose any of the vdevs (let say double drive failure) the whole pool is gone. that lead mt thinking that if I want a safer setup(yes I will have an external backup but as the data size expands it is a hustle to restore all), I maybe better off building a bunch of zpools out of separate vdevs and than pooling the zpools using something like mergerFS.
is it possible?
so the proposed setup would be
do
"zpool create -f tank1 mirror /dev/sd(3tb1) /dev/sd(3tb2) "
"zpool create -f tank2 mirror /dev/sd(3tb3) /dev/sd(3tb4) "
"zpool create -f tank3 mirror /dev/sd(2tb1) /dev/sd(2tb2) "
...
"zpool create -f tank5 mirror /dev/sd(2tb5) /dev/sd(2tb6) "
than make a mergerfs pool "mainData" using the tank1 through tank5
this way if any of the pools fail I only loose data on it. which at most will be 3TB or what ever the drives I use to build it. also expanding the pools will be easier as I only need to replace disk in single pool at a time or adding new pool to mergerFs volume.
PS>> is it possible to pas-through the zpool into VM , so I could setup an OMV and use mergerFS and sharing options in there. makes it easier to manage the sharing and pooling. as Proxmox already have the SMART and ZFS monitoring built in it will watch for hardware failure for me and OMV will manage the pooling of drives and sharing.
pleas state your opinions...
thanks VL
I have been planning to rebuild my home server with Proxmox VE 4.4
but as I have a single server, hardware wise, I need it to be a VM server AND a file server.
reading up on ZFS lead me to conclusion that while it is a nice robust FS it has it's issues.
for example, I have a bunch of spinners of different size in my setup.
a few 3T a few 2T a couple of 1T. to day I use OMV with BTRFS on all of them
and SnapRaid+MergerFS.
if I read correctly, I can build a ZFS pool using all of this drives by separating them into bunch of vDevs according to size and pooling the vdevs into zpool.
so as I have 4x3TB and 6x2TB and 2x1TB disks
I can do "zpool create -f tank mirror /dev/sd(3tb1) /dev/sd(3tb2) mirror /dev/sd(3tb3) /dev/sd(3tb4)
mirror /dev/sd(2tb1) /dev/sd(2tb2) ... mirror /dev/sd(2tb6) mirror /dev/sd(1tb1) /dev/sd(1tb2)"
which should give be 3+3+2+2+2+1 = 13TB zpool with 6 mirrored vdevs
NOTE: this is a file server data only. the proxmox and all vm stuff will be on zfs raid1 on a pair of 120GB or 240GB SSD (I simply do not remeber what are the system drives I use today.)
maybe I use the 1TB disks as raid1 zpool for additional system storage and backup space, if current ssds are 120GB so let say 12TB total in data space.
based on everything I read so far it seams that if I build the zfs pool as mentioned above, if I loose any of the vdevs (let say double drive failure) the whole pool is gone. that lead mt thinking that if I want a safer setup(yes I will have an external backup but as the data size expands it is a hustle to restore all), I maybe better off building a bunch of zpools out of separate vdevs and than pooling the zpools using something like mergerFS.
is it possible?
so the proposed setup would be
do
"zpool create -f tank1 mirror /dev/sd(3tb1) /dev/sd(3tb2) "
"zpool create -f tank2 mirror /dev/sd(3tb3) /dev/sd(3tb4) "
"zpool create -f tank3 mirror /dev/sd(2tb1) /dev/sd(2tb2) "
...
"zpool create -f tank5 mirror /dev/sd(2tb5) /dev/sd(2tb6) "
than make a mergerfs pool "mainData" using the tank1 through tank5
this way if any of the pools fail I only loose data on it. which at most will be 3TB or what ever the drives I use to build it. also expanding the pools will be easier as I only need to replace disk in single pool at a time or adding new pool to mergerFs volume.
PS>> is it possible to pas-through the zpool into VM , so I could setup an OMV and use mergerFS and sharing options in there. makes it easier to manage the sharing and pooling. as Proxmox already have the SMART and ZFS monitoring built in it will watch for hardware failure for me and OMV will manage the pooling of drives and sharing.
pleas state your opinions...
thanks VL