Comment on Proxmox Disk Performance Problems

seaQueue@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s an old Optiplex SFF with a single HDD. Again, my concern isn’t that it’s “slow”. It’s that performance has rather suddenly tanked and the only changes I’ve made are regular OS updates.

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  • seaQueue@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If I had to guess there was a code change in the PVE kernel or in their integrated ZFS module that led to a performance regression for your use case. I don’t really have any feedback there, PVE ships a modified version of an older kernel (6.2?) so something could have been backported into that tree that led to the regression. Same deal with ZFS, whichever version the PVE folks are shipping could have introduced a regression as well.

    Your best bet is to raise an issue with the PVE folks after identifying which kernel version introduced the regression, you’ll want to do a binary search between now and the last known good time that this wasn’t occurring to determine exactly when the issue started - then you can open an issue describing the regression.

    Or just throw a cheap SSD at the problem and move on, that’s what I’d do here. Something like this should outlast the machine you put it in.

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    • SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I thought cheap SSDs and ZFS didn’t play well together?

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      • pyrosis@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Keep in mind it’s more an issue with writes as others mentioned when it comes to ssds. I use two ssds in a zfs mirror that I installed proxmox directly on. It’s an option in the installer and it’s quite nice.

        As for combating writes that’s actually easier than you think and applies to any filesystem. It just takes knowing what is write intensive. Most of the time for a linux os like proxmox that’s going to be temp files and logs. Both of which can easily be migrated to tmpfs. Doing this will increase the lifespan of any ssd dramatically. You just have to understand restarting clears those locations because now they exist in ram.

        As I mentioned elsewhere opnsense has an option within the gui to migrate tmp files to memory.

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      • seaQueue@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Depends on the SSD, the one I linked is fine for most casual home server use. You’re unlikely to see enough of a write workload that endurance will be an issue. That’s an enterprise drive btw, it certainly wasn’t cheap when it was brand new and I doubt running a couple of VMs will wear it quickly. (I’ve had a few of those in service at home for 3-4y, no problems.)

        Consumer drives have more issues, their write endurance is considerably lower than most enterprise parts. You can blow through a cheap consumer SSD’s endurance in mere months with a hypervisor workload so I’d strongly recommend using enterprise drives where possible.

        It’s always worth taking a look at drive datasheets when you’re considering them and comparing the warranty lifespan to your expected usage too. The drive linked above has an expected endurance of like 2PB (~3 DWPD, OR 2TB/day, over 3y) so you shouldn’t have any problems there. See sandisk.com/…/cloudspeed-eco-genII-sata-ssd-datas…

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  • HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Quick and easy fix attempt would be to replace the HDD with an SSD. As others have said, the drive may just be failing. Replacing with an SSD would not only get rid of the suspect hardware, but would be an upgrade to boot. You can clone the drive, or just start fresh with the backups you have.

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    • SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I may end up having to go that route. I’m no expert but aren’t you supposed to use different parameters when using SSDs on ZFS vs an HDD?

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    • seaQueue@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s what I’d do here, used enterprise SSDs are dirt cheap on fleaBay

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