Shared storage is not absolutely necessary in a Proxmox cluster environment, but without a doubt, it makes storage management a simpler task. In a small business environment, it may be adequate not to have 24/7 uptime and 100% reliability, so a local storage system will suffice. In most enterprise virtual environments with critical data, shared storage is the only logical choice due to the benefits it brings to the whole cluster operation. The following are considered benefits of using shared storage:
- Live migration of a virtual machine
- Seamless expansion of multi-node storage space
- Centralized backup
- Multilevel data tiering
- Central storage management
