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Configure LVM with NVMe/TCP for Proxmox VE

Contributors netapp-jsnyder sureshthoppay
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Configure Logical Volume Manager (LVM) for shared storage across Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) hosts using NVMe over TCP protocol with NetApp ONTAP. This configuration provides high-performance block-level storage access over standard Ethernet networks using the modern NVMe protocol.

LVM shared pool with NVMe/TCP using ONTAP

Initial virtualization administrator tasks

Complete these initial tasks to prepare Proxmox VE hosts for NVMe/TCP connectivity and collect the necessary information for the storage administrator.

  1. Verify two Linux VLAN interfaces are available.

  2. On every Proxmox host in the cluster, run the following command to collect the host initiator information.

    nvme show-hostnqn

  3. Provide the collected host NQN information to the storage administrator and request an NVMe namespace of the required size.

Storage administrator tasks

If you are new to ONTAP, use System Manager for a better experience.

  1. Ensure the SVM is available with NVMe protocol enabled. Refer to NVMe tasks on ONTAP 9 documentation.

  2. Create the NVMe namespace.

    Show example

    nvme namespace creation

  3. Create the subsystem and assign host NQNs (if using CLI). Follow the reference link above.

  4. Ensure Anti-Ransomware protection is enabled on the security tab.

  5. Notify the virtualization administrator that the NVMe namespace is created.

Final virtualization administrator tasks

Complete these tasks to configure the NVMe namespace as shared LVM storage in Proxmox VE.

  1. Navigate to a shell on each Proxmox VE host in the cluster and create the /etc/nvme/discovery.conf file. Update the content specific to your environment.

    root@pxmox01:~# cat /etc/nvme/discovery.conf
# Used for extracting default parameters for discovery
#
# Example:
# --transport=<trtype> --traddr=<traddr> --trsvcid=<trsvcid> --host-traddr=<host-traddr> --host-iface=<host-iface>

-t tcp -l 1800 -a 172.21.118.153
-t tcp -l 1800 -a 172.21.118.154
-t tcp -l 1800 -a 172.21.119.153
-t tcp -l 1800 -a 172.21.119.154

  2. Log in to the NVMe subsystem.

    nvme connect-all

  3. Inspect and collect device details.

    nvme list
nvme netapp ontapdevices
nvme list-subsys
lsblk -l

  4. Create the volume group.

    vgcreate pvens02 /dev/mapper/<device id>

  5. Using the Management UI at https:<proxmox node>:8006, click Datacenter, select Storage, click Add, and select LVM.

    Show example

    lvm storage navigation

  6. Provide the storage ID name, choose the existing volume group, and select the volume group that was just created with the CLI. Check the shared option. With Proxmox VE 9 and above, enable the Allow Snapshots as Volume-Chain option, which is visible when the Advanced check box is enabled.

    Show example

    lvm on existing vg

  7. The following shows a sample storage configuration file for LVM using NVMe/TCP:

    Show example

    lvm on nvme tcp configuration

    With Proxmox VE 9 and above, the storage configuration file includes the additional option snapshot-as-volume-chain 1 when Allow Snapshots as Volume-Chain is enabled.

Note The nvme-cli package includes nvmef-autoconnect.service, which can be enabled to automatically connect to targets on boot. Refer to the nvme-cli documentation for more details.