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Looking to move away from VMWare in the cloud. We do not manage the VMware instance, so we have enough access to turn servers on and off, allocate resource, snapshots, VPN settings, and tweak some firewall settings. We have four Microsoft Server VMs running 12 vcores, a modest amount of RAM, and just over 2TB of total storage. Never having used Proxmox, or linux beyond trying out mint and SteamOS, it seems doable. We could create a storage ZFS pool with parity for a decent storage system. Run the VMs off NVMe. Use ISCSI to map the ZFS pool to the Windows VMs for networked file storage. Use snapshot to backup the VMs. Build a ProxMox Backup Server to back it up offsite. If we need other services, run them off of docker or other VMs as needed. It seems simple enough. If the storage need is under say 8TB, do we really want/need a NAS if we get ZFS/snapshots/backup in Proxmox? If it seems like it makes sense, I will probably play with it using my Ryzen 5900XT system as a homelab until I feel comfortable moving it to production. I just don’t know if this is where I should start. I am under no deadline or rush. This is a long term goal that, if this doesn’t work out, I am not in a bind or anything.

3 Spice ups
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You don’t need a NAS in any scenario, and if you only plan one host, local storage makes sense.

Bear in mind, if you move Windows VMs back to on-prem or you build new ones, you need licenses for these.