[Closed]need help setting up File Server container on Proxmox VE 5.1 with ZFS

I've been having one of the those weeks... Running flat out to stay in the same place...

Anyway, to explicitly answer your questions:

1. As I'm guessing you're aware, TurnKey is built on top of Debian. v14.x = Debian Jessie/8.x. We are currently working on v15.0 which will be based on Debian Stretch. In theory, you should be able to do an "in place" OS update as you would with vanilla Debian. However, please be aware, we haven't yet released our Stretch based packages, so you will likely have troubles updating any of the TurnKey specific software and it may even make the whole OS upgrade fail (I'm not sure, I haven't tested it). You may be able to hack around that by leaving the TurnKey repo at Jessie, but obviously it may get a little bit messy?

If you wish to try that, I suggest you install another separate instance and test on that. Another option would be to do a full backup of your server before you try. If you go the backup path, I suggest you test your backup first though. An untested backup is barely better than no backup at all!

Either way, please report back on how you go with it. OTOH, unless you have a specific need to upgrade, perhaps you're better just sticking with Jessie for now? It will get security updates until 2020 so unless you have specific need, it should continue to work fine for ages into the future.

2. You certainly can install additional software. Although I can't guarantee that nothing you do will negatively impact the current setup. In theory I would expect it to be fine, but in practice there are likely many things you could do to break stuff.

Again, if you do a trial run in a separate instance as per above suggestion is one way to go. Or you could do a backup (again as per above).

Although personally, I really like the redundancy that having lots of separate containers allows. I often have separate servers running that provide separate functions. Although I'm not sure how you'd go having the ZFS filesystem mounts mounted in 2 containers at the same time? That may be problematic? Especially if you had both systems trying to edit files at the same time. Having said that, you may still have those sort of issues with the software all installed on the one system...

Sorry I'm not providing and hard and fast answers, but hopefully it at least gives you some insight. Also, so long as all your data is safe and you don't risk losing anything which is irreplaceable, I urge you to approach it like play, or a fun science experiment. That way you can't lose, you can only learn! Worst case scenario, you'll learn a ton by a process of elimination (i.e. what not to do!). I recall when I first started learning Linux, I was told "if you don't break things, you're not playing hard enough!" I took it to heart and haven't looked back.

Good luck! :)

thank you Jeremy.

I have already figured out the setup and install the MediaServer from Proxmox Template 

as well as added the proper storage to it. all works great.

have couple of additional questions though..

Q1.  the MediaServer installed from tempalte is based on Debian 8 Jessie.

is there a way to update all to Debian 9 Strech? 

also if I update will it break the other apps? 

Q2. can I add/install more apps on the server withouth breaking the setup. 

I want to add SickBeard and Coach Potato with trnasmition to it. 

I have an openFLIXR VM setup but it is overkill for my needs. 

I want to use SB and CP to process and organaize my media and maybe an ocasional movie download

OpenFLIXR server simply takes too much resources for a mostly idle setup.

But I do use the Fileserver appliance myself (well actually, it's more like the Mediaserver appliance now as I installed Emby).

While on that point, yes the Mediaserver appliance is essentially the Fileserver appliance, with Emby installed as well. Emby does media management as well as providing a range of streaming services so media devices on your LAN can connect directly without requiring network filesharing config (e.g. DLNA). One of the really cool things about Emby IMO is the browser based playback. So any internet enabled device (with a web browser) on my LAN can watch stuff from my server via a web browser (almost like your own private YouTube). Whilst it is free (as in freedom) open source, the free (as in beer) version does have a few nag screens.

But back to the point I was trying to make on mounting stuff; I am only using a separate LVM volume (not part of PVE's storage), formatted in ext4. So things may well be a bit different. It's mounted on my PVE (v4.?) host and then mounted through into my fileserver (running as an LXC container as per what you described) via it's config file. I'm not using ZFS at all, but hopefully it should be somewhat similar?

Here's my current config:

root@pve ~# cat /etc/pve/nodes/pve/lxc/108.conf
arch: amd64
cores: 4
hostname: dafileserver
memory: 2048
mp0: /media/pve2-data2/storage,mp=/srv/storage
mp1: /media/pve3-data3/tv,mp=/srv/storage/tv
net0: name=eth0,bridge=vmbr0,gw=192.168.1.1,hwaddr=D6:4D:AD:7E:B2:49,ip=192.168.1.108/24,type=veth
ostype: debian
rootfs: local-lvm:vm-108-disk-1,size=8G
swap: 1024

As you can see, I have 2 additional (LVM) volumes mounted on the PVE host (/media/pve2-data2/storage & /media/pve3-data3/tv) mounted inside the LXC guest as /srv/storage & /srv/storage/tv respectively.

This fileserver has been running since circa 2012 (started on PVE v2.x). I do recall needing to make some radical changes when I upgraded hardware and installed PVE v4.x (v4.0 was the first version with LXC, previously it used OpenVZ). Back when I was running under OVZ, I had a set up that sounds similar to yours. I just had them mounted direct into the guest filesystem. I.e. mounted on the host, then bind-mounted into the guest.

When I did my migration, I removed the mounts from the OVZ container, and then migrated it from OpenVZ to LXC. I then moved the drives to the new hardware and reconfigured the mounts via the LXC conf file (as above). I don't recall why I did it that way, but I do vaguely recall some issue I had when I set it up as I had under OpenVZ. Regardless, it all works flawlessly...

Sorry to ramble a bit, but hopefully it makes some sense and has some value for you. If you have any Fileserver/Mediaserver (or TurnKey in general) specific questions, here will be the best place to ask. If you find yourself hitting ZFS specific issues (especially related to an LXC container) I suggest you post on the PVE forums. Bottom line, we're the TurnKey experts, they're the PromxoxVE experts! :)