I increasingly have the impression that Proxmox is becoming THE Linux universal server
- Current, very well maintained kernel with Debian as basis
- very good virtualization capabilities
- well-maintained ZFS
This paves the way for Proxmox as a universal Linux server not only for any services as a VM but also as a barebone storage server with ZFS. I see a storage VM under Proxmox as obsolete if you only use it to share datasets via a SAMBA server that is identical to Proxmox own SAMBA. The main reasons for a storage VM currently remain the limited ZFS management functions in Proxmox or an Illumos/Solaris VM because it allows SMB shares with Windows ntfs ACL (NFSv4) without the smb.conf masochism - zfs set sharesmb=on and everything is good.
If the ZFS management options in Proxmox are currently not enough for you, you can test my napp-it cs under Proxmox. Management is then carried out via a web GUI that can easily be downloaded and started under Windows. Under Proxmox you install the associated management service with
wget -O - www.napp-it.org/nappitcs | perl
(current status: beta, free for noncommercial use)