I’m planning to run multiple (maybe 1 depending if the storage configuration allows) StartOS and a Home Assistant OS instance on Proxmox using a multiple drives.
Can I pass multiple disks (e.g., 6 TB of the HDD and 500 GB of SSD) to a single StartOS VM, given that StartOS currently only supports one drive? I don’t think so but want to check if anyone has experience with this.
How would storage be handled inside StartOS so that, for example, can I have Jellyfin store its database and cache on the SSD and media files on the HDD?
For clarification let’s keep a clear distinction between drives, and partitions. StartOS can interface with three partitions, but for specific purposes. One partition for the OS, one partition for “data.” And an available third partition for backup. All services (software) that runs on StartOS is containerized, and stored in the data partition, along with it’s data. These partitions can all be on the same drive, or they can be on three separate physical drives, or a mix of the two. This is what StartOS looks for, and understands. It doesn’t matter the physical layout of the drives, as long as they are handled by the host, and offered to StartOS as I described. In your case, the physical layout, wherever/whatever it may be, is handled by Proxmox. One, two, or three virtual drives are offered to StartOS, running as a VM. Your physical layout might be multiple drives, that StartOS sees as a single drive.
I think that cleared it up for me, appreciate the answer!
I’m definitely learning as I go here, from what I can understand it would be possible to create a partition comprised of multiple drives using ZFS or btrfs and pass that as the single drive to StartOS.
I’m wondering if you have any experience with this setup and if in practice I would be able to achieve faster database read&write and caching for my media (jellyfin/nextcloud) by using the storage volume formats available on proxmox.
The other option I’m wondering, which I think I may be leaning towards at the moment for more direct control is keeping start9 as a node only, and then using proxmox to have a truenas VM for the media with explicit storage drives for the different types of file handling.
I believe this is correct. I get a little fuzzy about it when you start talking about drive formats. I’m unclear as to how the pieces fit together as far as host formats, and guest formats. StartOS will for format the partitions btrfs, but that may be on top of a zpool, handled by Proxmox, via ZFS. I do not have any experience with this setup, as the servers that Start9 sells, which is what StartOS is specifically designed for, have only a single drive. And StartOS is installed on bare metal. @OKIN may be able to provide some insight here.
Will do - won’t have time to dive into the weeds for a another month or so but I’ll post back here when I do. Might make a guide if it works well. We’ll see.