New drive for Proxmox boot - Move existing install or start again?

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Monki77

New Member
Oct 2, 2024
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I'm going to be getting 4x1TB SSDs soon to replace the boot drives in my existing PVE hosts, and i'm not sure on the best way to go about swapping my old drives over.
I have a Dell R220 and Dell R210 II. Both Dell's only have 2 x 3.5" drive bays, but I also have 2 x 2.5" SSDs sat in there too, as there is still enough physical space...but that's kind of irrelevant information

Both hosts have Proxmox Backup Server installed, which backup to a 2x12TB NAS. I know I shouldn't install PBS on the host OS, but I had no other choice.

Background on the hosts:
---------------------
Dell R220 - 3 containers, 2 VMs
2 x 500GB SSDs - ZFS mirror (mirrored after install, so only .part3 is mirrored - not the boot partition)
-PVE
-VM OS partitions

2 x 8TB HDDs - ZFS mirror
- VM Data partitions
-------------------
Dell R210 II - 1 container, 3 VMs
1x 120GB ZFS
- PVE
- VM OS partitions

1x 1TB HDD LVM-Thin (wanted LVM-thin for snapshots) - Data on this is disposable and can be downloaded again
- VM OS/Data partition

2 x 4TB HDDs - ZFS mirror
- VM Data partitions
------------------

The plan is to get 2 x 1TB SSDs for each host, and I thought if I just re-install PVE on both hosts and set up the zfs mirror during install, then I can set entire drive to be mirrored instead of just the data partition ( i think that's how it would work?).
I was then going to re-install PBS on each host and restore the VM's and containers.

What I would prefer to do is just copy the old PVE partitions to the new drives, so i don't have to restore the data and set everything back up again...but that leaves me with the annoying problem of not having the entire drive mirrored, so I can't win either way.


What would you guys recommened I do in this instance? Thanks!
 
Personally, I would do the backup option within each VM to an external HDD for the VMs and then just wipe and reinstall, but how did you get 4 drives into your R220? I have one as well, but there's only 3 SATA ports on board. Did you use the PCIe slot for an additional SATA or some kind of breakout cable?
 
I have a Dell Perc H310 in it, so the 2xHDDs go to that and the 2x2.5" SSDs go to the mainboard. I used a SATA power splitter for the power, and there's enough room above each HDD to just let the SSD sit loose.
You have to play around with the cable management but it works well!

Although, I've moved onto a HP (eurgh..) Z440 now, so everything from the 2x Dells just fits into that... with the help of some 3D printing. I miss iDRAC... but otherwise it's an awesome machine.
 
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Ah, gotcha makes sense now. It's too bad I have my PCIe slot taken up by a Quad i350 NIC for OPNSense, or I would do that. They really missed the boat with these things having only 1 PCIe slot, that's my only gripe with it. If it had two things would be a lot easier! Haha
 
SlimmySlims said:
Ah, gotcha makes sense now. It's too bad I have my PCIe slot taken up by a Quad i350 NIC for OPNSense, or I would do that. They really missed the boat with these things having only 1 PCIe slot, that's my only gripe with it. If it had two things would be a lot easier! Haha
Click to expand...
I loved my R220. It was a server in a school before I got it, so it'll have been running 24/7 nearly since birth and it never skipped a beat. Awesome little machine. I didn't want to upgrade... But yeah it's just let down by lack of HDD/PCIe
 
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