VBR13 Appliance other platforms

[ks.any.cloud]

Hi all,

I was recently discussing the two-disk requirement when deploying the Appliance. In my specific scenario, this requirement is causing several practical challenges.

My scenario
The hosting environment is a Red Hat–based VSI platform that supports QCOW2 and similar formats, but not OVA. Deploying via ISO is also not feasible. I attempted to integrate the ISO into a GRUB-based bootloader, but this quickly runs into UEFI-related constraints. The hosting platform appears to rely primarily on compatibility/legacy boot, where both BIOS and UEFI are technically available, but BIOS is the default.

A possible solution/workaround
This led me to consider whether a custom installation option for the Appliance could be viable. I understand that the repair/reinstall boot loader functionality would likely not work in such a scenario, as it presumably depends on the default two-disk layout.

Currently, disk2 i the OVA is used for:

/var/log
/var/log/audit
/var/lib/veeam

One possible alternative would be to move the /var/log and /var/log/audit directories to disk1, placed on a dedicated partition. This would still keep logs logically separated while allowing for capacity extension if required, without introducing a second disk.

The VEEAM repository path (/var/lib/veeam) would not necessarily need to be created during installation in this model, as a custom installation already prompts for the backup target. In my case, this would be object storage, but the same applies to other supported repository options.

I assume the second disk is also used for configuration and backup data. With a custom, single-disk setup, this would likely require defining an alternative location for configuration and backups.

Outcome/benefits for me(and maybe many more)
The main goal would be to allow deployment with a single disk. This would significantly simplify converting the primary disk to QCOW2 and deploying the Appliance on platforms beyond Hyper-V and VMware.

I hope this could be a potential improvement idea and would be interested in your thoughts on whether this could be feasible from a design and supportability perspective.
While discussing this here, im also discussing with the hosting provider.