Proxmox zfs storage for samba shares

I just installed NS as our private home server. It runs in a Proxmox VM - the OS on a SSSD and the shared data are meant to be stored on a vscsi disk inside the VM which uses Proxmox zfs storage. I could not install NS in a lxc container, which doesn’t work as AD controller. So I cannot mount the zfs storage directly like in a container. As far as I can see it is unavoidable to format the vscsi disk anew inside the VM.
Can anybody tell which format is the the best choice for that?
Or does anybody know a way to pass the zfs storage through to the VM without reformatting it? I did not find that anywhere in the net.

@Andy_Wismer is a great advocate of Proxmox & NethServer here and may have some good info for you.

1 Like

@rasi

Hi Ralph

I also tried using NethServer in a LXC (LinuX Container) - never got past the networking point.
But as a VM, NethServer works very well and stable.

Proxmox supports several options for file systems, best is to use what you’re comfortable with. Top is CEPH, ZFS is the best file system available, and Proxmox are major contributers to both the CEPH and the OpenZFS projects. If those two are beyond your hardware range, XFS is the next best choice, BTW, NethServer also uses XFS internally.

Your Problem, as I understand it:
You’ld like to use the storage available in Proxmox as ZFS…
Well, as I see it, one of the best solutions is to install a VM, giving it enough “breathing” space, like say 150 GB. This would be a full KVM virtual machine.

As a second step, once your VM is up and running, you can install something like plain vanilla NFSv3 on your Proxmox, and export a directory under ZFS with NFS. Inside NethServer create a Share with GUI. With console, use a symlink pointing to the NFS mountpoint (eg /mnt/zfs-volume/) and refer the iBay to the mount point.

You can repeat this for several shares.
Nextcloud can also access these shares…

Note: Resizing a virtualized NethServer KVM inside Proxmox to a larger disk sometime later on is a matter of minutes…

Other options would be using iSCSI, but that makes things more complex.
Your mileage may vary!

Hope this helps.

My 2 cents
Andy

1 Like

Yes, that’s the way I will do it. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Just a stupid question: what is a vanilla NFS server?

Cheers
Ralph

@rasi

Hi

Anything running NFS, be it Linux, BSD, Mac or Windows (Nothing “exotic” or special…). Actually implied is - use the built in Debian’s NFS - Proxmox is built upon Debian.

It’s like ice cream, vanilla being the starter flavour. Move your way up to strawberries or chocolate…

:slight_smile:
Andy

A while ago, I tried to work with zfs on nethserver:
playing-with-zfs

but didnt finish it…