I run several VMs in Libvirt, host is Debian 12. I’m want to create one dedicated to Samba sharing. What is the best way to expose more disks to a QEMU host? I have 6 SSDs I want to utilize on this VM.
- Creating a filesystem hardware node (virtiofs or virtio-9p)?
- A physical disk exposed to the VM via a Storage hardware node?
- Something more exotic like a zfs storage pool?
Best for me is more about reliability than anything else. I have tried sharing folders before using the Filesystem hardware node and Plan 9 but it was a little wonky when it came to permissions. I may not have set it up right, however.
I am partial to a LVM storage pool.
If there is nothing particularly distinct about any of your drives, then just lump them together into a volume group and add that as a storage pool to libvirt. Then you can divvy them out in whatever capacities you want.
This is assuming you don’t need core access to them from the host (other than the obvious samba share).
Disclaimer: I don’t have any experience with ZFS, but I suspect it probably serves a similar role and might possibly be just as well or better suited.