Adding Storage and managing Datastore Locations

[Jarvar]

Hello everybody,
Is it difficult to add storage and move the data store locations?
Is it as simple as adding storage and changing the data store mount location or moving it over?
Is there documentation or online tutorials for this?
If this is going to be a backup server, managing storage and adding additional drives and space will be an important factor.
Thank you so much.

 

[RobFantini]

Is it difficult to add storage and move the data store locations?

We started with a small zpool.
Added a larger zpool.
then just moved the directory for the datastore to the new zpool.
so move is not hard.

 

[Jarvar]

Just wondering if you can move from one store to another? For example, I tried the backup server out and it was one large drive at first, but I want to add more drives. Can I transfer the data from lets say store1 on the main installation to store2 which is on a separate drive?
Thanks.

 

[Jarvar]

We started with a small zpool.
Added a larger zpool.
then just moved the directory for the datastore to the new zpool.
so move is not hard.

You mentioned making a larger zpool and then moving the directory for the datasatore to the new pool.
I am quite new. How did you do that?
For example, I just added another disk where I want to store my backups. For now store1 is on /backup/disk1 but I created a new store on /backup/disk2 which is mounted /dev/sdb1.
Do you just copy the VM id directory from /backup/disk1/store1/vm/107 (if the vm was 107)?
thank you so much.

 

[Jarvar]

There is probably a better method or more acceptable, but I tried cp -r /107 from /backup/disk2/vm/107 to the /backup/disk1/ and I added and tried restoring. I got an error and realized there was chunks of data was missing. I then cp -R /backup/disk2/.chunks/ to the new location and restored. Seems to work.
If I did this, could I just add the new store to the current proxmox server and continue incremental backups from where I left off? Or will it try to create a new one?
I’ll make a differential backup before try and if things mess up atleast I can restore from that backup. Would be nice to know if I am going in the right direction though.
Thank you.

 

[RobFantini]

use rsync. to copy over the files. for example

rsync -aHxP /source/   /target/

however I also am seeing .chunks error messages . this is beta software so for now errors may be caused by a bug and not operator. usually the cause of errors has something to do with us operators.

also if you are adding new storage - with current version it might be easier just to make backups to the new storage instead of cp/rsync etc.

 

[Jarvar]

use rsync. to copy over the files. for example

rsync -aHxP /source/   /target/

however I also am seeing .chunks error messages . this is beta software so for now errors may be caused by a bug and not operator. usually the cause of errors has something to do with us operators.

also if you are adding new storage - with current version it might be easier just to make backups to the new storage instead of cp/rsync etc.

I know this is a novice question, but is rsync installed by default? or I need to install it?
Are there disadvantages to using cp -R ?
I know rsync is faster and does more checking and works local and remote and so on.
I'll look into it.
Thank you.

 

[chelin]

Loosely related: how about moving a PBS Datastore from one PBS installation to a different one ? This is my current config: I installed PBS on a physical machine, and connected an iSCSI drive to it, where I created the backups datastore. Now, I've installed a new PBS instance, this time on a VM, and I'd like to move the iSCSI disk from one install to the other. Do you guys think that will work ?