Undo RAID-1 Configuration

[TechNoob9]

Stupid question - I have a few VMs running. Is it possible to undo the RAID-1 configuration I have set up and not destroy any data/keep the VMs in tact in Proxmox?

 

If not, is the Proxmox back up feature solid? Or is there any other recommendations for a backup method?

[LIGISTX]

3 hours ago, TechNoob9 said:

Stupid question - I have a few VMs running. Is it possible to undo the RAID-1 configuration I have set up and not destroy any data/keep the VMs in tact in Proxmox?

 

If not, is the Proxmox back up feature solid? Or is there any other recommendations for a backup method?

Why do you want to undo RAID 1……? 
 

I was lazy/cheap/naive and didn’t set up my proxmox with a RAID1 boot drive, and now I’m going through rather annoying hoops to have it (via using backup, it does work well). But I virtualize pfsense under Proxmox so it makes all of this that much more annoying. When I take down Proxmox, I lose my LAN

[Electronics Wizardy]

How did you setup the raid 1? Is this your boot drive? Is this ZFS?

Often you can remove the drive and it will either go back to a single drive or a raid 1 and work as a single drive here.

[TechNoob9]

Proxmox is on an SSD. My VMs (including their OS) are on the ZFS mirrored.

 

I suspect i'll just have to transfer files to another hdd, then remove the mirror, wipe the drives, and roll everything back.

[LIGISTX]

41 minutes ago, TechNoob9 said:

Proxmox is on an SSD. My VMs (including their OS) are on the ZFS mirrored.

 

I suspect i'll just have to transfer files to another hdd, then remove the mirror, wipe the drives, and roll everything back.

If you want to ditch the mirror, yes. 
 

But what is your drive setup? Yo can instal VM’s to the proxmox boot drive. Set that up as a mirror, instal VM’s, then everything is nice and redundant. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, TechNoob9 said:

Proxmox is on an SSD. My VMs (including their OS) are on the ZFS mirrored.

 

I suspect i'll just have to transfer files to another hdd, then remove the mirror, wipe the drives, and roll everything back.

You can just remove a drive from a mirror in ZFS and its a single drive, with no issues that it was part of a mirror.

 

Just use the zpool remove POOLNAME DRIVENAME comand

[LIGISTX]

31 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can just remove a drive from a mirror in ZFS and its a single drive, with no issues that it was part of a mirror.

 

Just use the zpool remove POOLNAME DRIVENAME comand

That’s a good point… 

 

I still recommend using a mirror for boot/VM drive tho. Especially since it seems like OP has the drives. 

[TechNoob9]

52 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can just remove a drive from a mirror in ZFS and its a single drive, with no issues that it was part of a mirror.

 

Just use the zpool remove POOLNAME DRIVENAME comand

That won't cause my VMs that use the zfs mirror to crash? I assume I would wipe one of the drives to remove the copied data off of it?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, TechNoob9 said:

That won't cause my VMs that use the zfs mirror to crash? I assume I would wipe one of the drives to remove the copied data off of it?

You can do that all hot and everything will work fine(but user error and weird problems can come up, so have a plan if it doesn't go well.

 

You can reuse the drive for other stuff. 

[TechNoob9]

2 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

If you want to ditch the mirror, yes. 
 

But what is your drive setup? Yo can instal VM’s to the proxmox boot drive. Set that up as a mirror, instal VM’s, then everything is nice and redundant. 

Yeah. Next time I am going to put all my VMs on the same SSD as Proxmox and then just pass whatever HDD to the VMs.

[LIGISTX]

20 minutes ago, TechNoob9 said:

Yeah. Next time I am going to put all my VMs on the same SSD as Proxmox and then just pass whatever HDD to the VMs.

Why pass harddrives to a VM? Just share a pool of storage via SMB, and do it over networking. Basically use Proxmox as a NAS, and add SMB network mounts to the VM’s. 

[TechNoob9]

3 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

Why pass harddrives to a VM? Just share a pool of storage via SMB, and do it over networking. Basically use Proxmox as a NAS, and add SMB network mounts to the VM’s. 

Is SMB the same as ZFS? Also why do it over network? Would I be limited to network speed as opposed to the VM's resources only?

[LIGISTX]

1 minute ago, TechNoob9 said:

Is SMB the same as ZFS? Also why do it over network? Would I be limited to network speed as opposed to the VM's resources only?

No, SMB is a network file sharing protocol. It’s how you access data on a NAS for example. And you would do this so any machine can access the data…

 

What data are you storing and what are the VM’s doing? 
 

For example, all of my data resides within my truenas array, and VM’s, docker containers, my PC, MacBook, nvidia shield tv, etc, all connect via SMB (or NFS for some of the Linux systems) all get at that data via network mounts. 
 

VM’s usually will have a virtual nic driver that operates at 10gigabit (really, it just swaps RAM at the kernel level, so, it’s more like as fast as RAM would be, which means it’s not really a performance issue), so if you have a storage VM with another VM trying to get at that data, there won’t be much in the way of performance issues, even if it’s was going over normal gigabit Ethernet, that’s almost certainly fast enough anyways, again, what are you even using this machine and is vm’s for?

[TechNoob9]

4 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

No, SMB is a network file sharing protocol. It’s how you access data on a NAS for example. And you would do this so any machine can access the data…

 

What data are you storing and what are the VM’s doing? 
 

For example, all of my data resides within my truenas array, and VM’s, docker containers, my PC, MacBook, nvidia shield tv, etc, all connect via SMB (or NFS for some of the Linux systems) all get at that data via network mounts. 
 

VM’s usually will have a virtual nic driver that operates at 10gigabit (really, it just swaps RAM at the kernel level, so, it’s more like as fast as RAM would be, which means it’s not really a performance issue), so if you have a storage VM with another VM trying to get at that data, there won’t be much in the way of performance issues, even if it’s was going over normal gigabit Ethernet, that’s almost certainly fast enough anyways, again, what are you even using this machine and is vm’s for?

A Plex server on Ubuntu Desktop. Currently ripping DVDs on that VM and saving the rips on the drive I passed through.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, TechNoob9 said:

Yeah. Next time I am going to put all my VMs on the same SSD as Proxmox and then just pass whatever HDD to the VMs.

Normally you want to have proxmox mount the hdd, then make virtual disks for the vms/containers on that hdd. I'd normally suggest against passing HDDs to a vm, as its much more flexable fro things like backups and migration too.

 

Just now, TechNoob9 said:

A Plex server on Ubuntu Desktop. Currently ripping DVDs on that VM and saving the rips on the drive I passed through.

NO need for disk passthrough then. Just mount that hdd on the proxmox host, and have a virtual disk for that vm.

[TechNoob9]

8 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Normally you want to have proxmox mount the hdd, then make virtual disks for the vms/containers on that hdd. I'd normally suggest against passing HDDs to a vm, as its much more flexable fro things like backups and migration too.

 

NO need for disk passthrough then. Just mount that hdd on the proxmox host, and have a virtual disk for that vm.

 

Sorry, maybe I am getting confused with the terminology. I have an SSD that has proxmox and OS isos. I ended up doing a RAID 1 configuration with two 1TB HDD on the node. I created a Ubuntu VM on that ZFS pool and assigned space. I often resize the hdd space and passthrough addition GB. To me that is "passthrough" the ZFS pool (or drive). Or am I off?

[LIGISTX]

5 minutes ago, TechNoob9 said:

 

Sorry, maybe I am getting confused with the terminology. I have an SSD that has proxmox and OS isos. I ended up doing a RAID 1 configuration with two 1TB HDD on the node. I created a Ubuntu VM on that ZFS pool and assigned space. I often resize the hdd space and passthrough addition GB. To me that is "passthrough" the ZFS pool (or drive). Or am I off?

Just network share it. Then you can access the dvd rips from any other PC you have to organize things, or copy them to a flash drive for a friend, etc. and then you can use that space as a NAS as well and just dump data on there from your PC.  
 

Many ways to skin this cat, and what you are doing is not “wrong”, there is no right vs wrong, but if you think of it like a NAS, it would give you more flexibility and capability. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 minutes ago, TechNoob9 said:

 

Sorry, maybe I am getting confused with the terminology. I have an SSD that has proxmox and OS isos. I ended up doing a RAID 1 configuration with two 1TB HDD on the node. I created a Ubuntu VM on that ZFS pool and assigned space. I often resize the hdd space and passthrough addition GB. To me that is "passthrough" the ZFS pool (or drive). Or am I off?

That is just using a virtual disk. Passthrough would be to give that VM access to the HDD directly.

 

Also you can set it up so the virtual disk only uses the space that is used in the vm, so you don't have to resize in proxmox often.

[TechNoob9]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

That is just using a virtual disk. Passthrough would be to give that VM access to the HDD directly.

 

Also you can set it up so the virtual disk only uses the space that is used in the vm, so you don't have to resize in proxmox often.

 

Aren't I giving access to the HDD directly from the VM?

 

I don't quite get what you mean. I mean I could just assign the whole disk space is your point? Yeah, I was busy experimenting with other VMs hahah.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, TechNoob9 said:

 

Aren't I giving access to the HDD directly from the VM?

 

I don't quite get what you mean. I mean I could just assign the whole disk space is your point? Yeah, I was busy experimenting with other VMs hahah.

Proxmox has access to the disk, and it has the drive mounted with ZFS. You are created a virtual disk on ZFS and passing that to a vm.

 

You can over provision storage. That way your vms have access to more storage than there is total. That way you don't have to shrink storage to use other vms.