Adding an existing virtual disk image

[chrcoluk]

Thanks Marsalleq, I do feel proxmox needs to improve in this area, there should be a simple add existing image button when creating a VM, or at the very least you should not be forced to create a new disk and then allow to add an image when editing the VM post creation.

 

[jcestevez]

qm rescan ftw!!!

Passed

 

[emdebbed]

It its also always possible to manually add a disk as qemu parameter. Eg if your VM has the ID 100 and your disk is sdX you can add the following line in your config file under /etc/pve/qemu-server/100.conf:

args: -drive file=/dev/sdX,if=virtio,index=10,format=raw

Of course proxmox has no understanding of that config, so the disk will not appear in the GUI and probably will not be migrated and so on...

 

[iamanewuser]

I found how to attach the disk with a combination of the GUI and console.
1 Make sure you have a VM created with the same ID as the ID used on the disk. (I assume you can just rename the disk file name too if you have access to it). So if you have vm-100-disk-2 then you need a VM created with ID of 100.
2 Then do a qm rescan in the console of the Proxmox server.
3 Then the disks show up magically as unused disks in the GUI, under the hardware option within the specific VM
4 Then click edit on them, make sure they look right and click OK.
All done.

"qm rescan"
Thank you very much!

 

[yonoss]

Any particular reason why there is no UI functionality to add/import a VM for which I have a disk ?
My usescans is the following:
my proxmox installation sdd failed and I was forced to reinstall it. After installation I was able to add the old disk which contained the VM disks, I can see the VM disks under node-> storage -> VM Disks, but I'm not finding an easy way to start them in the proxmox console.

Any other virtualization systems I've worked with has such a functionality, but proxmox seems to miss it...

 

[Aktar111]

I 100% agree with yonoss, especially because it seems, from looking at old (2011) forum posts and guides, that this functionality used to exist (https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/adding-an-existing-virtual-disk-image.7614/post-43546)