Proxmox mount ZFS shared folder to store backups and other content types

ZFS is a multi purpose filesystem which I can highly recommend. It is stable and very functional. Proxmox can take advantages of ZFS when making snapshots for example.

However, when adding ZFS storage to Proxmox you are limited to storing Disk Images and Containers. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Why not store your backups or ISO on your fancy ZFS storage?

To accomplish this there are a few easy steps required. First of all we need a ZFS pool of course. If you haven’t done this already, make sure you have some spare disks, then go to the node –> Disks –> ZFS –> Create: ZFS button on the top of the screen. You can probably use the default settings (ashift 12, compression on).

When there is a ZFS pool, we need a dataset. The easiest way to do this is via the shell. Select the node and enter the shell, or login via SSH to your proxmox host. Then create a dataset:

zfs create <poolname>/<datasetname>
zfs create zfsstorage/mydataset

Now we need to tell Proxmox this dataset can be used for storage. Edit the storage.cfg

nano /etc/pve/storage.cfg

And add a directory like this:

dir: zfsdirectory
  path /zfsstorage/mydataset
  content iso,images,backup #and other types you like
  shared 0 #unless you share this via NFS, see this post.
  is_mountpoint 1

When you save the file, the directory should automatically show in the WebGUI. Well done!