Hey everyone, I'm considering migrating from my current Windows Server 2019 Datacenter setup using Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) to a Proxmox and Ceph solution. I have two clusters, each with four Dell R750 servers (1 TB RAM, dual Intel Gold CPUs, and 16 NVMe drives) connected through two TOR switches. I'm looking for insights on whether this migration makes sense in terms of stability, long-term scalability, and future-proofing, especially considering potential changes in Microsoft licensing. Any advice would be appreciated!
4 Answers
If most of your VMs are Windows-based, your licensing might not change significantly. Just keep in mind that switching to Standard is cost-effective only when you're running fewer than about 12 VMs per host. Furthermore, remember that in any Proxmox cluster, all hosts need to be licensed to operate your VMs.
I've done this transition from S2D to Proxmox myself. When looking at licenses, if you're mostly running Windows VMs, the costs won’t change much. As for Proxmox and Ceph, I’ve had a pretty good experience with it in my homelab. Just a note, Ceph does well with an odd number of monitor nodes, so consider adding one into your setup.
Migrated a 3-node S2D cluster to Proxmox and had stability issues with S2D, where it would hang for a while every month. I used Veeam for backup and added a temporary node for an easier transition. Make sure you’re comfortable with Linux, as it's quite different from Windows.
First off, do you have Windows VMs running? If you do, you might still need to cover licensing costs. Even if you switch from Datacenter to Standard licensing, you'll find it doesn't save you much if you're keeping a significant number of Windows servers up.
Yes, about 75% of my VMs are on Windows. We're thinking of moving to SPLA Standard to save some cash since we have a lot of hosts. I hope it'll reduce our costs significantly.
Thanks for the tips! I understand that, but I'm really having issues with ReFS on S2D, especially how it writes over the network and behaves like a bottleneck when connectivity drops.