pfSense not enabling port
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@georgelza What is your thinking re Ceph and splitting the drive for Proxmox?
Perhaps you could use that for backup of VM's ans stuff, but I'm not so sure that is a good idea? You want to keep those disks alive for a long time so I'd try to keep the disk activity low.Perhaps it's a better idea to install a Proxmox Backup Server as a VM on one of the Proxmox machines. And then assign some disks space on your TrueNAS Scale to it, for VM backups. You can always store a few backups directly on the Proxmox machines as well, for somewhat quicker restore.
Wrt the port mappings, I wouldn't necessarily limit any port on Proxmox to a single VLAN. I mean, you can have all this on a single port if you want:
Main management => lan / 172.16.10.0/24
Main client connectivity => lan
Proxmox cluster +> vlan30
Storage => vlan40I have two Proxmox machines with 2.5G ports and one with 1G port on the mobo, and they all have 10G SFP+ added. I assign Ports and VLANs to VM's freely and depending on need. So anything that may require high throughput, is assigned one or more 10G port. And if I want it to be in a particular VLAN, I set that in Proxmox. (so it is as if it was hanging off an Untagged port on a switch).
I also have some VLANs that only exist on my switches (no interfce or DCHP on pfsense). They are used to create switches withing the switches so to say. One thing I use it for is to "tunnel" the LTE router LAN port from our top floor, to my failover WAN on pfsense. This port is assigned on the 2.5G port on Proxmox. Same port being used for a couple of other VM's as well... In this case I have two SFP+ ports passed thru (IOMMU) to pfsense, so they can't be used for any other VM's
I mean the logical connections or assignments rather, don't have to define or limit the way you physically connect things. And I'm sort of liking 3A more in that regard, as it is cleaner and simpler on the pfsense side, and the Trunk between your two switches is 10G..
And I'm wondering about the dual connection to the NAS? What disks are you using? Would you really expect throughput to reach even 10G?
I'm wondring if this discussion should continue on the Virtualization section?
Where perhaps we could always discuss the option of virtualizing also pfsense, and the benefits and possible drawbacks of that...
I mean the i5-P1240 seems pretty much on par with my i5-11400 which is simply killing it in my setup on Proxmox... Even the 10400 that I also have gives me similar perfomance on a 10G fiber connection. 8+ Gbps speedtest with Suricata running in legacy mode. -
Hi hi.
The idea of splitting the 1TB NVME into 200/800 is 200 for ProxMox Hypervisor and then 800 into a Ceph shared Volume that will be expanded across the nodes, direct OS access for fast IO.
For backup I can push that to my TrueNAS, 100TB should be enough....
Mind you not a bad idea to also use that for the ISO images as a shared source rather.As for port mapping, was actually thinking about just running all as vLan's over the 10GbE fiber. but also with this install and the pfSense work realised having 2 ways to get onto device that work independent is not a bad idea, allow me to reconfigure/change one without me disconnecting myself.
I was also liking 3A, but then there is also the adage of dont hang switches of switches. and the traffic on the aggregation will 98% be just between the machines on it... but then that also means, just hang it off the 10GbE SFP of the ProMax. Guess i will play with this once the aggregation gets here and see.
As for the dual connection to NAS, fair comment... these are jsut 7200rpm spinning rust... probably just do it because i can... and won't have a need for that extra port anytime soon anyhow.
I'm def not keen on a virtual pfSense, I like the stand alone nature of the physical build, seperate from the rest of my environment.
my pfsense is build on the U300E processor.
G
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@georgelza Well as long as you keep space for the VM's which will be dependent on the disk size per VM. ISO's typically don't use up that much space... I mean there are only so many ISO's you would keep... so I don't think I would spend to much energy on setting that up...
I get the thing about the dual connection on the NAS, and I would probably do the same thing, "because you can"... Happens all the time, but I guess I'm thinking freeing up switch ports. Which on the other hand, you don't need I suppose... But in reality you have 3 ports connected to the NAS, counting the 2.5G, which seems like a bit of waste? But then again, because you can...
Aha so a different CPU, with fewer cores and performance threads. BTW, how did you set this up with pfsense, given that there is a difference between the cores? Can it manage the internal processes across different types of cores?
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Hi there
Yes, ISO's don't use much space, but i also don't want to have multiple copies on all the units, I'd rather have one store where they are shared.
As for the VM's the idea is to store their "VM images" on the Ceph storage. which is shared across the cluster, which mean the VM can be started on any node. With the current the VM image needs to be copied over to the target node.
the pfsense is running on a decimated TopTon server,
Proxmox is running on a different server.
the pfSense was a new installed and then a backup/restore of my config from the original celeron box and allot if trying to get things working.
Sort of how this thread started ;)
As for how pfSense uses the cores, that we would need to ask them, my previous server had 4 low end celeron's. this thing got some very very beefy new cores compared.G
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guessing i'm hoping someone with more Proxmox experience than me can comment on using a Ceph volume as the vm image storage. Other option is to place the VM images on my NAS, but thing that even with the 10GbE would not be desirable.
need to get a good answer on this before i pull trigger on rebuild pmox1.
G
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@georgelza I see your point with the Ceph storage, which sounds like a good idea!
I suppose the question is if Proxmox will safeguard against starting the same VM on two machines, which would create a conflict of course.
I want to think it does, and the one way to be sure is when you have tested it...
Using the NAS for storage instead will probably make things a bit slow, compared to the built in nvme's. Then again, I don't suppose you will be starting and stopping VM's all the time? Except in the beginning when you are setting things up.
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Yes... the VM is started via the data centre and that won't allow you to start it twice. You will need to clone it and give it new name and IP.
I'd prefer to have the VM Images on local mirror via Ceph, gives me speed and Ceph will make sure there is a copy on another node.
Would like someone else to chirp in here... confirm this works with Proxmox. know other Hypervisors allow this.
G
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have a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7OMi3bw0pQ
The guy talks about storage.Guess I need to think, do I use ZFS or Ceph.
G
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... discovery...
if you've been following this thread, we did not assign a 172.16.40.0/24 address to the physical port of the Topton, the thinking it's primarily a passthrough for vlan40 onto the hosted guest VM's...
Forgetting that the pmox# itself will be mounting a NFS volume to be shared... thus it will itself need a source ip on that port... vmbr40, otherwise it does not know who it is...
Been the root cause of my NFS mount problems the last 3-4 days. The second I assigned 172.16.40.51 to the first node NFS stabilised and was working immediately on click... on the node.
G
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ask...
other than the official proxmox forum which does not seem to have much activity, anyone aware of a active/responsive proxmox community...
otherwise wondering if we can get the admin's here to create a proxmox section ;)G
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@georgelza said in pfSense not enabling port:
Yes... the VM is started via the data centre and that won't allow you to start it twice. You will need to clone it and give it new name and IP.
I'd prefer to have the VM Images on local mirror via Ceph, gives me speed and Ceph will make sure there is a copy on another node.
Would like someone else to chirp in here... confirm this works with Proxmox. know other Hypervisors allow this.
G
Yes that is my understanding as well, although I have not tried it. And I totally agree that using the local nvme's will give you way more speed.
I still suggest creating a PBS VM (Proxmox Backup Server) and perhaps map e.g. a disk on your TrueNAS for that. I've had a few instanses where I have wanted to "go back in time" and restore something from a few weeks back even. Typically because I messed up and didn't realize it until some time later.
other than the official proxmox forum which does not seem to have much activity, anyone aware of a active/responsive proxmox community...
otherwise wondering if we can get the admin's here to create a proxmox section ;)There is a virtualization section already, with plenty Proxmox activity...
https://forum.netgate.com/category/33/virtualization
