I’ve added 2 external USBs of 2TB each to my Proxmox server and created a Resource Pool called USB_HDD containing both. I created an Ubuntu VM, but I can’t allocate all 4TB to it in one go - it only allows me to add each one as a separate SCSI device. When I start to install the OS it only allows the install onto one of the 2TB devices. I though the point of pools was to make the actual disks transparent, and present the pool to the VM so it sees it as one lot of space. Am I doing something wrong, or do I have to have it as 2x2TB disks?
You must log in or register to comment.
I think the question is if you want to add the external USB hard drives to Proxmox so that not just the mentioned Ubuntu VM but other VMs and LXCs can benefit from them or if you want them to be added exclusively to the Ubuntu VM and Ubuntu VM only.
If it is the latter, you can leverage USB device passthrough and passthrough the two drives to the VM in whole. Then you can do whatever you want with them inside the VM. You can use ZFS or BTRFS or mdadm to create a stripe aka RAID 0 config.
As per the documentation, pools are basically just resource groups to make permission management easier, so they aren’t really supposed to handle anything like that. Maybe look into a RAID setup of some sort or mergerfs if you just need file level pooling.
Sounds like you’re passing the physical HDDs to the VM instead of creating a new virtual HDD file in your proxmox pool.
If you don’t mind me asking, what are you trying to do with your VM?
I believe a resource pool, is just a group of resources, so adding a resource pool of 2 devices is exactly the same as adding those 2 devices manually, (I normally use them as VM groups to backup though).
You might be able to do striping (combining 2 devices into 1) using ZFS in Proxmox, or I think LVM can but you’d be using the command line.
Thanks for the responses; it seems I can’t really do it. I looked into ZFS but if I use that it halves the available disk space to 2TB. I’m using the VM for a media server and thought it would be better to have 1 4TB space instead of 2 2TB disks. At the end of the day it isn’t a big deal, I just thought I’d be able to present both disks as 1.
I would suggest adding both disks to the VM, and then using mergerFS installed inside to pool the disks together for easier media storage.
Only if you never want to use those disks for anything else on that server
In this case ‘adding disks’ could mean either direct pass-through, or just adding a virtual disk on each physical disk in Proxmox so they can be used for other things as well.
looked into ZFS but if I use that it halves the available disk space to 2TB.
Look harder :-)
ZFS can do it either way.
Indeed ZFS has support for stripe (RAID0 like) vdev since very early days.
Bump
