My little Proxmox cluster is coming into iit’ss own with a few virtual machines (VMs) and containers running across the 2 nodes of the cluster. However, I have been downloading operating system ISOs and container templates (CT) to each node when needed, and backup is currently non-existent. Time to do something about that….
Sharing is Caring
Adding a share to the Proxmox cluster provides a potential solution to these issues. A share can be used:
- To store ISO images and Container Templates
No more uploading the ISO images and CTs to each node, saving time and space on the individual nodes. - To store backups
Each node can back up VMs and CTs to the share. If anything happens to the VMs and CTs they can be recovered from the backup. As the backup is not on the individual nodes it can even help if a node completely fails. - Disk storage
If nodes have limited disk space they can use the share as a disk storage option.
Adding NFS Share
Previously I wrote about adding an NFS share, its the same principles for this project. On a device (I’m using a Raspberry Pi as the share sever) create the NFS shares and share them out.
Note: I don’t recommend using a VM or container within the cluster as the share server, if its running on a node that fails it will cause the share to fail.
Within Proxmox choose the Datacenter on the left, then click Storage from within the Datacenter options. It will show the current storage available to the Datacenter, which for me was local and local-lvm.
Clicking “Add” then gives the options for the storage that can be added, depending on the type of storage share being used. I’m using NFS so chose that option, but if your using a different type then make sure to choose appropriately.
The NFS options then ask what ID the storage should be known as, I went with pi (as that should remind me in future its my Raspberry Pi storage server), the hostname/ip of the server, the share to be accessed and what solutions Proxmox can use the storage for (e.g. backup, ISO storage, CT storage, disk images). Click (which leaves the solutions highlighted) the solutions that you want active, then click “Ok“.
The share should then show in the Storage pane and can be used when carrying out Proxmox operations.
