Proxmox VE Setup Part 3: Physical Storage

How-To: Proxmox VE Part 3

Monday 3rd March 2025

In part 2 I setup the underlying network for the VM and storage traffic. Now I need to configure the storage before I can start installing Virtual Machines.

Storage Setup

By Benjamin Lehman on Unsplash.com

This is a recap from Part 1:

Ideally, I would build a 3-node Ceph Cluster (or more) with alot of high-speed nvme disks. Then I would create separate partitions for:

• Boot partition and root directory

• Containers and VM Storage

• ISO storage

But I don’t have that. What I do have is a custom built gaming computer and a NAS. My storage design is therefore:

• x2 SATA SSDs with 500GB each*, configured as RAID 1 (mirrored). These drives are used for the boot partition and the root directory (configured in initial setup)

• x2 NVME SSDs with 1TB each, configured as RAID 1 (mirrored). These drives will contain the primary disks of the VMs.

• An iSCSI link to my NAS. This is used for secondary VM disks to store alot of data in certain directories (will be covered in the upcoming post).

• One 2TB HDD for storage of ISO images and other non-critical data. It’s not entirely necessary, but it was there, so I might as well use it for something.

500GB for the linux operating system might seem excessive. The reason for that much space is that I read somewhere that the Proxmox VE does alot of logging. Until I have setup a remote logging server, I don’t want to risk running out of space.

Proxmox VE Storage Configuration

Creating a ZFS RAID for the NVME disks

This is going to be used by Primary VM disks

Go to node_name > Disks > ZFS > Create: ZFS

Settings:

• Name: VM-Disks

• RAID Level: Mirror (RAID1)

• Check “Add Storage”

That’s it. Suspiciously easy.

Creating an LVM for the HDD drive and create a mount point

The HDD is going to be used to store ISO images locally.

Creating an LVM is usually a best practice if you plan to add more drives later. Then you can add those new drives to the existing LVM.

To create an LVM, there are 7 steps involved:

1. Create physical volume with pvcreate

2. Create volume group with vgcreate

3. create a logical volume with lvcreate

4. format the logical volume with a filesystem

5. mount the logical volume to a mount point

6. Create a directory where you can store your ISO images on - in proxmox GUI

7. Upload images to the directory - in proxmox GUI

The best way to do these tasks is through the CLI, unless something else is mentioned.

Step 0: Wipe the disk

In the case the disk already contains partitions.

In proxmox VE GUI, navigate to your_node > disks and wipe the disks you are going to need for your logical volume.

Step 1: Create a Physical Volume

pvcreate /dev/sda

Step 2: Create a Volume Group

vgcreate VG-HDD /dev/sda

Step 3: Create a Logical Volume

lvcreate -L 1.8T -n LV-HDD VG-HDD

Note: 1.8T is the total size of the disk. You can find out exactly how big your disk is with lsblk

Now you can verify that the logical volume and volume group are created with lvs:

root@lbs-pve01:~# lvs
LV  VG  Attr  LSize Pool Origin Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
LV-HDD VG-HDD -wi-ao---- 1.80t 

In proxmox under LVM, you can see that about 99% of the disk is assigned to the logical volume just created:

Step 4: Format the volume with a filesystem

mkfs.ext4 /dev/VG-HDD/LV-HDD

Step 5: Mount the volume to a mount point

First create the mountpoint:

mkdir -p /mnt/ISO

Then mount:

mount /dev/VG-HDD/LV-HDD /mnt/ISO

You can verify with lsblk:

root@lbs-pve01:~# lsblk
NAME              MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda                 8:0    0   1.8T  0 disk 
└─VG--HDD-LV--HDD 252:0    0   1.8T  0 lvm  /mnt/ISO
...

To make it persistent through reboot, add the new mountpoint to /etc/fstab:

nano /etc/fstab

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/VG-HDD/LV-HDD /mnt/ISO ext4 defaults 0 2

After that, update grub and reboot

update-grub

reboot

Step 6: Create a directory to store your ISO images on (GUI)

Navigate to Datacenter > Storage > Add > Directory

Settings:

• ID: ISO

• Directory: /mnt/ISO

• Content: ISO image

• Enable: yes

• Shared: yes

Step 7: upload your iso image

Under the newly created Directory, Click on ISO Images > Upload

That concludes the physical drive setup. The next part will demonstrate how to add a network attached iSCSI storage.