Which host system for nethserver virtualization should I use

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yes i know topic is maybe closed, but please forgive my little OT… considering that @wahmed is here i wish to thank him for his books, thank you! i hope to see a third version when proxmox5 will be out :sunglasses:
back on topic, i also use proxmox :slight_smile:

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Totally agree with you @dz00te! I’ve purchased Wasim’s other books in the past (as well as purchased proxmox support from him to help us keep our company proxmox/ceph server cluster healthy) and I too look forward to his next book. :smile:

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Thanks @dz00te!

You will be happy to know 3rd version of the book Mastering Proxmox is being worked at this moment. Plan is to get it published as close as possible to Proxmox 5 release.

Obviously I am a hardcore Proxmox user as well. Would not use any other hypervisor even if my life depended on it. :smile:

Thanks to Charles @greavette I found Nethserver. Although there are lot of room for improvement so I am happy so far. Have not used all features yet just email/webtop. I came from long years of ClearOS. Great product but due to the licensing change and the cost I was always on the look out for whats out there.

I do thank Nethserver @dev_team for the work they have done so far. Nethserver got great potential.

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great! I look forward to read it :slight_smile:

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Just finished your 2nd edition @wahmed
Great read - thanks!

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Happy to see you here @wahmed and thanks @greavette for having invited him.

I’d like to go further, would you mind? Please give us more details

Which improvements are you looking for? Really curious to know your feelings

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I am waiting for some memory, but as soon that arrives, I will be installing my new home server:
case: Bitfenix Prodigy (ofc the blue one)
Motherboard: Supermicro mITX
Memory: 16GB DDR4 Reg ECC
Disks: 1xSSD 60GB, 1xHDD 250GB, 2xHDD 2TB

I will be installing Proxmox 5.0 (has just been released). On the proxmox forums I asked what disk setup and fs I best use since I have no clue (yet).

I will report back on how this is going to work out.

After some searching, watching proxmox videos and response on the proxmox forums, I will probably do the following setup:
1xHDD 250 GB for proxmox
1x SSD 60GB for ZFS cache
2x 2TB for ZFS storage pool (Mirrored Vdev)

any proxmox users want to comment on this?

Don’t use zfs pool. Install debian, do your linux software raid partition yourself, then install proxmox.

Zfs needs a lot of ram and when you break your array, your data is lost

This is my bad experience I have had

I highly value your opinion, but on the proxmox forums they seem to be rather fond of using ZFS.
If I use a mirrored Vdev, what data would be lost if one disk fails? Isn’t it so that mirrored Vdev is more or less equivalent to standard Raid1?

This server will have 16GB of ram and 2 free memory slots available, so I can expand with another 16GB (or 32GB if money permits)
To be complete: this is the discussion I started on proxmox forums: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/disk-setup-for-proxmox-5-install.35659/

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How many people could repair a zfs array in this forum…probably one hundred here can advice you to repair a linux software raid…this is the question.

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True that, but in every case you encounter you should have a decent amount of curiousness :slight_smile: Even the data on my server is quite precious to me (a lot of family and vacation foto’s) I am sure ZFS is quite mature right now and there are tools to replace a (failed or too small) disk in a ZFS pool in a safe way.

Before attempting anything I will make sure I have my backups in a way I can restore anything I don’t want to loose.

It will be a great opportunity to get NethServer wiki pages filled with ZFS related documentation.

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With 16 GB of RAM and ZFS you won’t have much RAM for VMs…

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I am using Xenserver 7.1
an Nethserver is running fine as a VM

but you can try proxmox too

I finally received the DRAM modules for my server. installed proxmox 5 from the promox ISO (based on Debian 9). I have now NethServer running as a VM and a container with Debian 8 which is hosting the Unifi controller. I am still learning how to best use the several disk volumes.
Just ‘because I can’ I created a ZFS mirror of 2 2TB disks. There I put my VM’s and CT’s.

So far running smoothly. I may need to add some additional RAM, but untill now I still have free memory available (about 2GB free) Another option is use the SSD as caching disk for ZFS.

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Hi Rob,
It’s strange that you only have 2GB free for a 2x2TB pool
I have a 14TB zfs pool and the server has 16 GB of RAM (FreeNAS).

In your case i think that Proxmox is eating a lot of RAM.
I suggest you try to separate the compute from storage. Maybe use a small microserver for storage and use the dell server only for Proxmox.

h i@ctek i think there was some kind of indexing going on. now the proxmox summary gives a tota l of 6GB in use. 4GB for VM plus CT and 2 GB for ZFS…

Hi Rob, yes that’s correct to assume.
At first, the zpool is created and there is an increase of activity. This is also to be expected when you replace a disk and re-silvering is performed. But it should not be continuous.
Usually you need 1GB of RAM for each TB of storage.

This changes if you use encryption, deduplication and compression.
Add another 500 MB of RAM per option / TB. Also it will be processor intensive. (the curve gets easier with RAM increase)

You can monitor the resources used and i guess that it will not go over 8 GB on regular use.
On intense periods you should see around 12-15 GB used with 80% pool usage activity.
Maybe you can try zabbix to monitor the server.

Adding a 240 ARC ssd drive should help

It’s really interesting to see how your setup will perform in the future. :slight_smile:
Keep us informed

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[quote=“robb, post:40, topic:6522”]
and 2 GB for ZFS…
[/quote]:fearful:
Little OT: so much RAM for managing the Filesystem? I didn’know that ZFS could be so eager of memory…

@pike zfs is more than ‘just a filesystem’ and yes it takes up quite some RAM, but the advantages are amongst others: deduplication, saving diskspace and selfhealing from corruption.

When system shutdown gracefully. At announcement time the features seemed like fabulous-fiction for IT.
With this amount of RAM used, if the UPS fails or is missing that should be a hyper-cube-bad…