Data Center file access for VMs

So a next in line problem to work is how to have a VM have access to a file-space of data that is larger than its own disk image.

First some background:

Virtual Machines (VMs) are created with a fixed amount of "disk space". This amount is whatever number you give it when you create the VM. In this era of giant disks, no reason to be cheap on this; I will discuss with the customer/user how much they want, but I don't expect to give anyone more than 1TB.

Servers with four disk drive slots can hold ~100TB of space. They can have max 20-24 VMs running without having trouble about CPU core utilization (where each VM is using one core; fewer VMs if they use more than one core). So in theory each VM could have ~5TB of its own space. Those are big VMs at that point.

If a user is needing more than that, they should be using a separate file-share hosted on another machine whose purpose is hosting and sharing files. This article is about that setup.

There are several ways to do this. I have not investigated them all. Several are better integrated into ProxMox (CEPH and ZFS for example). 

This article is about using SAMBA. The reason for this is because it has disk-quota control, which is important for paid services and resource control. Also, you can relatively easily add more capacity.

I did, ~2 years ago, have a Windows Server 2022 DC Edition in operation. That particular group of five machines had really weak passwords and got hacked. I wiped those several machines and started over, but I didn't bring back the Windows share(s) I had created...that was a "lab cluster" so it didn't matter too much.

This time, however, I want to do this better, with greater controls. So Samba it is.

Step one is install Ubuntu as the host OS. Standard approaches apply, either a USB or a PXE server. I'm trying to only use PXE at work, with a USB at home so I don't have to have another server running at home.