Which filetype to minimize wear?

[TechNoob9]

I have an NVME installed that I was planning on using to install all of my VMs and Containers. Which file system type should I use to minimize wear and maximize life?

What about filesystems for HDDs that will be general storage? (e.g., media, back ups, playing around)

[Dedayog]

5 minutes ago, TechNoob9 said:

I have an NVME installed that I was planning on using to install all of my VMs and Containers. Which file system type should I use to minimize wear and maximize life?

What about filesystems for HDDs that will be general storage? (e.g., media, back ups, playing around)

Is this even a thing?  Not sure how a filesystem can minimize wear, as the act of reading and writing are the primary wear aspects.

[jaslion]

Don't matter the read and write quanitity is what wears

[8tg]

9 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Is this even a thing?

No it isnt, this is some mega nerd tier minmaxing that people do on /g/ either ironically or as actual schizo strats. XFS is technically better for drive health but on massive multi drive scales, SGI was using it for servers in the late 90's and its been part of linux for ages. But its barely tested, barely proven, "technically" on the grandest scale one can be technically better.

[Electronics Wizardy]

what os is this? FIle system is pretty os specific

 

The filesystem shouldn't affect ssd writes that much, and generally don't worry bout writes in a home server setup.

[TechNoob9]

delete

[TechNoob9]

56 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Is this even a thing?  Not sure how a filesystem can minimize wear, as the act of reading and writing are the primary wear aspects.

 

44 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Don't matter the read and write quanitity is what wears

 

43 minutes ago, 8tg said:

No it isnt, this is some mega nerd tier minmaxing that people do on /g/ either ironically or as actual schizo strats. XFS is technically better for drive health but on massive multi drive scales, SGI was using it for servers in the late 90's and its been part of linux for ages. But its barely tested, barely proven, "technically" on the grandest scale one can be technically better.

 

42 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

what os is this? FIle system is pretty os specific

 

The filesystem shouldn't affect ssd writes that much, and generally don't worry bout writes in a home server setup.

Interesting. I've read on the Proxmox forums and Reddit that Proxmox wear on SSDs is a thing. Probably trying to optimize the last 5% of a drive life I guess.

 

So I am guessing ZFS single disk for everything? My back up is cloud/external HDD. I can't see any drawbacks, but I am not that experienced.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, TechNoob9 said:

 

 

 

Interesting. I've read on the Proxmox forums and Reddit that Proxmox wear on SSDs is a thing. Probably trying to optimize the last 5% of a drive life I guess.

 

So I am guessing ZFS single disk for everything? My back up is cloud/external HDD. I can't see any drawbacks, but I am not that experienced.

ZFS will work fine.

 

I did some testing once on writes due to the proxmox os, and got about 10TB a year(your will probably see my video if you look up proxmox videos on youtube). I woudln't worry about that number, but you can reduce it if you turn of some features like the cluster services(not needed on a single node setup).

 

 

[LIGISTX]

8 hours ago, TechNoob9 said:

 

 

 

Interesting. I've read on the Proxmox forums and Reddit that Proxmox wear on SSDs is a thing. Probably trying to optimize the last 5% of a drive life I guess.

 

So I am guessing ZFS single disk for everything? My back up is cloud/external HDD. I can't see any drawbacks, but I am not that experienced.

FWIW, I am running proxmox on a nvme, and after one year it showed 10% life usage. I forget the actual TB written figure, but it seemed within reason.

[TechNoob9]

15 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

ZFS will work fine.

 

I did some testing once on writes due to the proxmox os, and got about 10TB a year(your will probably see my video if you look up proxmox videos on youtube). I woudln't worry about that number, but you can reduce it if you turn of some features like the cluster services(not needed on a single node setup).

 

 

Yeah I decided to use ZFS... But trying to mount the drive that is ZFS in the fstab is becoming its own challenge lol.

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, TechNoob9 said:

Yeah I decided to use ZFS... But trying to mount the drive that is ZFS in the fstab is becoming its own challenge lol.

 

you  dont mount ZFS in fstab generally. Zpools shouldf mount auto matically at boot.

[TechNoob9]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

 

you  dont mount ZFS in fstab generally. Zpools shouldf mount auto matically at boot.

Interesting. But, I am not pooling two hdd together. Just have 1 HDD with ZFS filesystem.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, TechNoob9 said:

Interesting. But, I am not pooling two hdd together. Just have 1 HDD with ZFS filesystem.

There is always a Zpool, even with one disk. 

 

The zpool should auto mount on boot. Does it do that here?

[TechNoob9]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

There is always a Zpool, even with one disk. 

 

The zpool should auto mount on boot. Does it do that here?

So I passed through the drive to my Ubuntu Server VM via /sbin/qm set 100 -scsi1 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST14000NM0121_ZKL2R2DG in Proxmox host:

 

But this is as far as I have gotten.

 

In host, when I do zfs list and zfs pool:

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, TechNoob9 said:

So I passed through the drive to my Ubuntu Server VM via /sbin/qm set 100 -scsi1 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST14000NM0121_ZKL2R2DG in Proxmox host:

 

But this is as far as I have gotten.

 

In host, when I do zfs list and zfs pool:

 

It looks like the disk is passed to a vm and monted via ZFS. Thats a big no no as you want the disk to be used by a file system on the host xor passed to a vm, not both. Use Zpool export if you don't want the host to mount/use the zpool and yo want it to be used by the vm.

[TechNoob9]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

It looks like the disk is passed to a vm and monted via ZFS. Thats a big no no as you want the disk to be used by a file system on the host xor passed to a vm, not both. Use Zpool export if you don't want the host to mount/use the zpool and yo want it to be used by the vm.

The command line screen is of my host, not my VM.

 

The only thing I did in Proxmox was make the HDD ZFS single disk.

 

When I go fdisk -l on the VM, it does show up:

 

Is there anything else I need to do?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, TechNoob9 said:

The command line screen is of my host, not my VM.

 

The only thing I did in Proxmox was make the HDD ZFS single disk.

 

When I go fdisk -l on the VM, it does show up:

 

Is there anything else I need to do?

 

Are you passing the disk to a vm at the same time as having a zpool mounted on the host? Don't do that, that will lead to lots of problems. Either mount the HDD on the host, or pass it to a vm, not both. 

[TechNoob9]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Are you passing the disk to a vm at the same time as having a zpool mounted on the host? Don't do that, that will lead to lots of problems. Either mount the HDD on the host, or pass it to a vm, not both. 

Oh, I see. I guess I am. When I installed the new HDD, I was under the impression that you have to pick an initial filesystem:

 

 

You're saying just "initialize disk with gpt" and then pass it through to the VM?

[Electronics Wizardy]

56 minutes ago, TechNoob9 said:

Oh, I see. I guess I am. When I installed the new HDD, I was under the impression that you have to pick an initial filesystem:

 

 

You're saying just "initialize disk with gpt" and then pass it through to the VM?

If you want to pass the whole disk to a vm, don't initialzie it all all. Just pass the whole block device to the VM.

 

But I'd generally reccoment using something like ZFS and virtual disks for the VMs. Makes things like snapshots and backups much easier.

[TechNoob9]

29 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

If you want to pass the whole disk to a vm, don't initialzie it all all. Just pass the whole block device to the VM.

 

But I'd generally reccoment using something like ZFS and virtual disks for the VMs. Makes things like snapshots and backups much easier.

But in order to make it ZFS, wouldn't I run into the same issue as I have right now? Can I still share virtual disks? Dumb question... How do I make a virtual disk?

[Electronics Wizardy]

24 minutes ago, TechNoob9 said:

But in order to make it ZFS, wouldn't I run into the same issue as I have right now? Can I still share virtual disks? Dumb question... How do I make a virtual disk?

Setup the drive as ZFS and as a storage in proxmox.

 

Then add a disk to the VM to use. Don't pass through the whole disk, but select the add > Hard disk option in the hardware section for the VM.

 

 

[TechNoob9]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Setup the drive as ZFS and as a storage in proxmox.

 

Then add a disk to the VM to use. Don't pass through the whole disk, but select the add > Hard disk option in the hardware section for the VM.

 

 

Yeah, that's what I did but via cli from the host:

 

/sbin/qm set 100 -scsi1 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST14000NM0121_ZKL2R2DG in Proxmox host

 

Is there anything else I need to do? I assume just go into the VM and mount it?

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, TechNoob9 said:

Yeah, that's what I did but via cli from the host:

 

/sbin/qm set 100 -scsi1 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST14000NM0121_ZKL2R2DG in Proxmox host

 

Is there anything else I need to do? I assume just go into the VM and mount it?

 

 

No, that command passes the whole disk through. You don't normally want to do that. 

 

You want to create a virtual hard disk for the VM, using the ZFS storage of the HDD.

 

I'd do this through the GUI here if your new to Proxmox.

[TechNoob9]

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

No, that command passes the whole disk through. You don't normally want to do that. 

 

You want to create a virtual hard disk for the VM, using the ZFS storage of the HDD.

 

I'd do this through the GUI here if your new to Proxmox.

Oh I see. Just pick an initial amount first, then if I need more, assign more via the gui?

 

After I do this, do I need to do anything else in the VM to set it up?

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, TechNoob9 said:

Oh I see. Just pick an initial amount first, then if I need more, assign more via the gui?

 

After I do this, do I need to do anything else in the VM to set it up?

Yup, you can expand virtual disks as needed. 

 

It should just show up as a disk you can use in the VM.