Hello! I have Proxmox VE running on a Dell R730 with an H730. Proxmox manages the disks in a ZFS RAID which is exactly how I want it. Because I intend for this server to have a NAS/file server, I want to set up a container or VM in proxmox that will provide network storage shares to domain-joined systems. Pretty much everything in my lab is joined to FreeIPA, so I’d like to use the IdM features with my file server. I have given TKL FileServer a shot but it really didn’t seem up to snuff with what I wanted. I am not looking for a NAS solution that will require me to pass through the RAID controller and disks to Proxmox, as I want Proxmox managing the ZFS pool. I can set up an NFS/Samba server in a container, however in trying to do so I was running into issues (due to it being an unprivileged container) that I can probably figure out but I want to see if anyone has any recommendations first.
Hmm. If you are going to have proxmox managing zfs anyway then why not just create datasets and share them directly from the hypervisor?
You can do that in terminal but if you prefer a gui you can install cockpit on the hypervisor with the zfs plugin. It would create a separate web gui on another port. Making it easy to create, manage, and share datasets as you desire.
It will save resources and simplify zfs management operations if you are interested in such a method.
I’ve been happily running Open Media Vault in a Proxmox VM for some time now.
I don’t understand all the words you’re using but:
Having had Proxmox sort out my drives and having had failures and Proxmox refuse to start if the drive isn’t present (it was present but forgot it’s label so it wasn’t there for Proxmox) I recommend just passing through the drives to your NAS and having it handle the drives.
That way if they fail then your NAS fails but Proxmox boots.
Also if you’re mounting them directly use the “nofail” option so it doesn’t kill your Proxmox if you don’t just have the NAS handle it.
My go-to for this is a plain Debian or Ubuntu container with Cockpit and the 45Drives file sharing plugin. It’s pretty straightforward and works pretty well.
To add to this, here is a tutorial with video that goes into the permissions. One of the cockpit modules has had an update, so make sure you bump the version number.
- I had to make it a privileged container to get NFS working. If you only need SMB, unprivileged is fine. There’s nfs-utils for userspace nfs setups, but I haven’t futz with it yet.
https://www.apalrd.net/posts/2023/ultimate_nas/
I replaced a TrueNAS install with this and haven’t been happier. It was such a bloated resource hog for what an LXC and a podman/dockge install can do.
Seconded on Cockpit project w File Sharing.
Probably not best practice, but it’s possible to install it on the PVE host itself since its ZFS manager and Identity manager plugins and other features fills some gaps in what Proxmox doesn’t do (or would have to drop to CLI to do).
Also recommend RClone in a systemd can take care of various file movements, syncs and backup tasks you may need against the host, vdumps or SMB file shares.
