About to give up on Proxmox

[magu2k]

Hello all,

I have gotten quite frustrated with Proxmox, and I am on the verge of removing Proxmox and deciding it just doesn't have "it". I have been using it for a week or 2. I signed up here specifically to give this a shot at addressing it, but my view, at the moment, is Proxmox simply does not work for Windows Server guests. I have not tried other versions IE. 10 or newer server editions as the only one I really need is server 2019, which I need to run in 2 VM's. I am not planning to try other windows OS's as I feel they are unlikely to work any better and am reaching a point where I need this stuff working.

I will outline briefly what attracted me to Proxmox initially: I wanted a web interface, a largely speaking singular install phase, and cluster capablity. Proxmox has those down pretty good. Proxmox also has a pretty wide user base, not VMWare levels, but still quite reasonable.

I looked at KVM and other related multi-component setups and finding one with a web interface that is half as reasonable as Proxmox (or that would actually work at all) is hard, there is not much out there that really works well. IMO while the Proxmox GUI and layout still could use a lot of work, it's not too bad once you get used to it. Every other solution seems to be install this program with no instructions for current versions of linux (or this particular distribution, etc), then install these 50 applications with no instructions (or none for this version) and then in many cases the web interface is paid only or just really (and I mean really) poor, or again, has effectively no (or no current) instructions. So thats a real plus for Proxmox, in my view.

Solutions like VMWare, while I'm sure it's great, I'm not keen to give them all my info. So for me, thats a "no". Xen doesn't have a good web interface (and it's kinda nagware)

I want to run a mix of operating systems, and it seems it can do that, I really like Ubuntu server, small, easy to use as gui-less linux (at least to me), and not resource hungry, I love it for my small "low resource" servers. The "test" I used for my initial proxmox experimentation was Unifi manager on Ubuntu server and other than an issue further below, it's been great.

So, thats the good, now here are the issues that, at the moment, are complete roadblocks to me using Proxmox:

1. It's soooo fussy about getting a VM to work with windows server, it took 3 days just to get it to boot. I have been able to get it to boot, but terms of configuration, within both proxmox and to a lesser degree, the guest VMs, painted into a corner. More on that detailed below.

2. Detaching the hard drive and reattaching a new one to the Virtual disk: no boot. This may need further testing still. It may be I tried to use SATA or something.

3. Can not change from SCSI adapter and the hard drive has to be IDE or it doesn't seem to work.

4. impossible to increase drive size. One particular guest requires ~100GB, I had to extend the drive, then in guest VM (server 2019) computer management shows the unused space as unallocated space, as it should. Try to extend volume, it gives an error. there are no partitions between the boot partition and the free space. Reboot, go back to computer management, it shows the correct volume size, all allocated to C drive but the space is unavailable to the OS - explorer and disk properties still shows the original size. No amount of reboots or anything I can think of changes this. If needed I can post a single image with the reported disk size in explorer and Computer management on the screen at the same time. It's frankly mind boggling and I have never seen this happen. Presumably this is some issue with the "hard disk" device.

5. Can not at all install virtIO - all except the guest agent just crash saying "catastrophic failure", if I try manually with each one, with most recent version of VirtIO. If I use the installer it just starts installing then fails. But hey, at least I can see the IP address of the VM in the summary.

6. May be due to some really specific situation or series of occurrences, I do not know, but I have a situation where the virtual hard disk was X GB (in the guest operating sysytem) but the actual file is X+ some other number of GB (qcow2) and the qcow image happened to surpass the capacity of the drive - This bricked every VM I had including non-windows ones. To be clear, I was paying attention to it's reporting size in the guest VM and not the actual size of the qcow2 file at that moment, so that's kinda my fault, but shouldn't Proxmox catch things like this? It crashed all the VM's, that's no big deal but none of them would boot except the aforementioned Unifi on Ubuntu server one.. but it had to be repaired. Was able to recover the windows ones too with some work. But that is a problem.

7. Due to the situation with the above (6), I created a share one one of my NAS servers to use as storage, which I connected and it detected and 'works', but performance is extremely slow. The NAS in question is capable of easily 300MBps sustained. I was deleting a folder within the VM guest at a rate of about 100files/minute. Transfer rate was roughly 2-5MBps. I have no idea why "drive" performance over a local network is so poor. Is there more involved than just adding the smb share? What else might be an underlying issue?

8. The difficulty of working with a virtual disk is rather frustrating, you can not easily even convert between formats without using ssh. Rather nonsensical. I was unaware, until later, about the performance differences of qcow2 (it's a format that is new to me) but if I had known it was so painfully slow I'd never have bothered with it. Also, I really, really feel I need to complain here. You can (very easily!) upload an image file to mount , IE ISO images, etc. But the functionality for the same for a hard disk image is very poor to nonexistant, clunky, unintuitive and just overall a really poor experience. It leaves me feeling like importing VM's is a non-consideration. Via the UI, you should be able to convert between formats and move them easily between different storage areas.

9. While I have been held back from really doing much testing on it due to the first item (1), it is, seemingly, impossible to take a windows VHDX, convert it (that part works inside windows seemingly but can't yet confirm the output file is functional) and then transfer it to Proxmox and run it as the hard drive. It could be due to various issues I have yet to sort out and it is possible I may just not have done it correctly. But it's a difficult process. The rather extreme difficulty of putting existing virtual disk images into proxmox and the vague details of how disk2vhd works in windows and seemingly difficulties with attaching any virtual drive that are on my NAS... unless it was first connected inside of LVM? I dunno. There are a lot of question marks in this one.

10. Due to the issues outlined above in (4) I made a new VM just to test 100GB virtual disk in RAW and I can not get windows to install. This is one of the last things I did with proxmox before writing this. Could it be because the virtual disk is on my NAS (the LVM drive won't currently contain a 100gb disk until I can add a drive. Could it be the size? I really do not know. I followed the same instructions as has worked before in smaller virtual disk sizes, have the TPM and EFI pertitions, have virtio image laoded, and can load the drivers, but can not get it to install it just says there isn't enough space. the installer shows 100GB unallocated, and then says it needs a mimimum of 13GB (or whatever the actual size is, I forget the number)


Just as further info, the 100GB machine could be safely rebuilt as a VM with backups, but the other windows machine, which only requires around ~40-60GB can not be reinstalled or transferred. There is no way to transfer the data to a new install (without significant loss) so I am left with the option of having to restart the work on that machine from scratch, which will take multiple weeks to 'replicate'(I do not see this as a viable option), continuing to run it on the machine it's on(older machine with a bad motherboard it reboots randomly... not too often, but still too much for what it serves), virtualize it (which is what I would prefer) or try to transfer the whole (physical) drive to a different machine that I currently do not have unless I ditch Proxmox.

Realistically, at the moment the only solution I can see is ditching proxmox, transfer the abovementioned drive (server 2019) to what is currently the proxmox machine and run all my VM's on that windows install, in Hyper-V. not at all the solution I want, but possibly the only one that will work as far as I can see at this moment.

While I'm open to hearing various discussion I mostly am interested to see solutions to the above issues, does it sound like I just have a bad proxmox install? Poor configuration? I am open to a complete re-install if there is a perception it will help. And if this does not bear answers, then hopefully this info can be used to improve the program, I like the idea of Proxmox.

 

[alexskysilk]

1. learning curve. follow https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Windows_10_guest_best_practices for all windows version 2016 and up.
2. did you change the boot order in the vm config?
3. Microsoft doesnt provide virtio drivers in their installer. once you have the machine fully booted, install the virtio drivers and you'd be able to switch the host bus. just as 2 above, make sure to change the boot order after you've done so
4. no clue why you have problems. logs would help. Generally speaking, if you want help to solve problems, you need to provide diagnostic data or you cant expect anything useful.
5. what version of the virtio ISO are you using? what version of windows? a google search would probably point you in the right direction.
6. backing stores matter. dont provision more space to the image then you have available.
7. search the forums. tons of posts dealing with performance.
8. What are you asking here? anything you do the first time is difficult, and if you dont invest the time to learn what you're doing, who is that on?
9. Again, a google search should have brought you to https://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/convert-images.html. its literally one command.
10. No idea what you're on about. cloning VMs is literally a button click, as is a backup.

Take the time to understand what you're doing, what you expect, and how those two things relate to each other. "Performance" is a function of the slowest component- take the time to understand the whole path, not just a single aspect arbitrarily.

GIGO.

 

[magu2k]

1. learning curve. follow https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Windows_10_guest_best_practices for all windows version 2016 and up.
2. did you change the boot order in the vm config?
3. Microsoft doesnt provide virtio drivers in their installer. once you have the machine fully booted, install the virtio drivers and you'd be able to switch the host bus. just as 2 above, make sure to change the boot order after you've done so
4. no clue why you have problems. logs would help. Generally speaking, if you want help to solve problems, you need to provide diagnostic data or you cant expect anything useful.
5. what version of the virtio ISO are you using? what version of windows? a google search would probably point you in the right direction.
6. backing stores matter. dont provision more space to the image then you have available.
7. search the forums. tons of posts dealing with performance.
8. What are you asking here? anything you do the first time is difficult, and if you dont invest the time to learn what you're doing, who is that on?
9. Again, a google search should have brought you to https://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/convert-images.html. its literally one command.
10. No idea what you're on about. cloning VMs is literally a button click, as is a backup.

Take the time to understand what you're doing, what you expect, and how those two things relate to each other. "Performance" is a function of the slowest component- take the time to understand the whole path, not just a single aspect arbitrarily.

GIGO.

1. Yes I used it, none of it other than one or two items is actually doing anything or working at all. But I am quite aware of it.

2. I have yes, changed the boot order, it is the first device. Does nto seem to be the issue but it was somewhat on the first day.

3. Yes, using the latest listed version 0.1.229. But the only one I have been able to successfully install was the host that reports the ip address. The rest fail to install..

4. Will post logs later on in a different reply

6. I understand but generally if you create a file that is too large for the device, the device tells you not just crashes everything. This has generally been the case in the years I have been involved in computing. I understand and explained my error as part of it, but why does the operating system not detect that at the time you are expanding it? The first step is in the host operating system, so there should be a comparison of it's new size to the space available. It just destroys everything. That isn't good design.

8. Not a question, it is a statement that explains one of the huge roadblocks I have that effectively limits use of the software. I think the way I wrote it explains it fairly straightforwardly, but I'll try to clarify and simplify it: It's easy to upload and mount a disk image, like an ISO but there is no real UI mechanism for uploading and mounting a virtual disk image (like raw, qcow2, or any other format).

Example: I want to upload an ISO of an operating system to install.. Click Local. Click Upload. Point to file. Upload. Done

Example: I want to upload an image of a hard drive that I am trying to import to a VM from a separate running system or a VM on another computer: Local-lvm: No upload button. Neither the guest VM menus nor the lvm storage seem to have a function to allow uploading said images. It all has to be done manually. And therein is my argument. If we can just do it via SSH, why isn't everything SSH? It's the point of the software we are talking about to have these functions. It doesn't matter if it is one command or not. This should be very common fucntionalty.

9. Yes I have that, to clarify, I have done that, the issue is I can not actually use the image and boot it to tell if the conversion worked. I was converting on windows due to the current space limitations on the host.

10. I wasn't talking about cloning, but that is exactly what I did do however, the problem does not appear to be cloning, it is that I can not get a 100gb image (raw or qcow) to work. I can not currently determine if it's the size or the location of the storage that is the issue, or something else.
The steps I took are that I cloned the existing 40GB VM, moved it's storage to my NAS, select the drive, click disk action, resize, add 60GB to total the desired 100GB. Then in windows, well the rest is detailed in my post: In really brief detail: computer management shows the unallocated new space. Right click, extend volume, go through the menu to allocate it to the desired partition. It appears to work for a minute or so, then gives an error. Reboot the machine. Go back to Computer management, it shows the space in the desired partition as I would want it to. However, the space does not show up otherwise. Explorer and disk properties (right click disk, properties) still shows the original 40GB size not the new desired 100GB size. the system continues to act as though it has only 40gb, not 100.

So if the issue there, is that I need virtio, it goes back to that: Why can I not install any of the VirtIO drivers?

 

[LnxBil]

I feel you pain, yet most of the problems are no PVE-related. You would run into the same problems in other virtualization products, too.

4) is a very specific non-PVE-yet-windows problem and I don't get why virtualized windows systems have this at all. The recovery partition is in the way. Remove it and you will not have any problems with increasing the size in windows like you would expect. You won't need a recovery partition in a virtualized environment. Just boot your favorite Windows rescue image and fix everything from there. No need to waste space in EVERY windows system you have.