I have xcpng running on my dell poweredge server and have been slowly purchasing more drives to expand the storage. I use the raid card in the system to combine all drives into a raid 5 config.
I am hosting my home assistant server as a vm and currently have the storage disk maxed at the 2tb (limit for snapshots). However my home assistant server doubles as my nvr for 8 cameras currently and more will be connected eventually. With that said, the 2tb isn’t really enough space. I would like to maintain the “correct” setup and have the server/os run off its own vdi and throw all the camera footage to a different vdi.
I do not currently have a nas, nor do I want to purchase one, I would rather have everything contained within this one server (of course backup will be taken and stored outside of chassis)
The footage from the cameras are not crazy valuable, as far as backups go.
I think I remember seeing a way to create larger vdi’s via the cli, could I do that and create and attach to the home assistant vm and still get snapshots to work either through disconnecting the footage vdi and taking a snapshot or through some other method. Snapshots aren’t super necessary for this system, as i have a config back that is pretty easy to deploy. But if i can snapshot, i would like that option.
You can run a virtual filer as a VM on XCP-ng and make it use a middle layer like LVM that makes it easy to add further VDIs when the existing get filled up. This way you do not need to expand any VDIs.
A rather bulky kind of virtual filer is running TrueNAS in a VM and with a pool layout using striped vdevs.
Note that this is officially discouraged by iXsystems. Nevertheless, I am using this for several virtual filers without problems for some years now.
Alright, after i watched your video, it would seem as thought this also remove/breaks snapshot functionality. Please correct me, if i am thinking incorrectly, for me i think creating a larger vdi manually would be easier and would offer roughly the issues?
Breaks more than just snapshots, also breaks rolling pool upgrades (assuming you have more than 1 XCP-NG server). This is why I abandoned the thought for my systems. Build a mini-NAS, even a single mirror pool would be OK for most home lab use and if you build it with fast nvme drives, probably just as fast as a multidrive array. Even Open Media Vault might be OK with NFS shares, I was very close to trying this and still not completely ruled out to bring my power/noise/heat down even farther on my DIY mini-nas.
