Advice on VM backup, VE reinstall and VM restore

[billmccollam]

Very new Proxmox user here with some basic questions. I installed Proxmox VE a couple of weeks ago as a learning expereince. I've installed three VMs inlcluding TrueNAS Scale with a few apps running under it, and Ubuntu with Portainer and some other containers running there. When I started I fully expecting to make mistakes and have to start over. But it's generally gone pretty well - to the extent that I wouldnt want to redo all the configurations if I don't need to.

Having said that, I did make one questionable decision early on that I don't think I can correct without a VE reinstallation.

First issue
I started with a pretty small bootable SSD (60GB) and designated the local as LVM Thin. After a while I was having some issues with the TrueNAS VM stopping due to IO error which I guessed was due to running out of room on the LV (it was at 100%). So I added an external drive and extended the local VG/LV. This seemed to fix TrueNAS as it hasnt stopped since. But as I thought more about it, I'm not happy with being so dependent on the cheap USB drive I used. I've since tried to move the PVE VG to another HDD but in so doing Ive run into some issues around using LVM Thin. (Can't shrink it). Maybe there is a way around that but I'd be happier not using that storage method. But I think I'll have to reinstall the PVE to reconfigure local storage. Correct?

Second issue
So it seems easy enough for me to backup the VMs. Probably to another USB external drive. Then I'd reinstall the VE with a different storage method and restore the VMs from the backup. I guess my questions are about the backups:

• What all is being backed up... one of the VMs is TrueNAS that has 3 disks with about 3TB assigned to it (only 5% used). Is that data being backed up - or just the VM itself? Presumably I wouldnt really need the data backed up as I'll still have that data on those disks...
• Given that the VE that I reinstall won't be using the same storage type as the original - will this create any conflicts with the metadata stored in the backup? In other words, if I'm restoring TrueNAS that was originally stored in an LVM Thin method - will it restore to an LVM method okay?

Apologies in advance for any dumb assumptions and if you'd prefer to point me to an applicable tutorial - I'd be fine with that .... been looking.

Cheers
Bill

 

[ITandAutomation]

1. No you can always create new storages where you can store the VM drives for example an ZFS Pool. This is not depended on the storage proxmox is installed on.
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Storage

2. this depends on the disk settings you choose in the VM hardware settings - you can choos to backup this disk or not ( see screenshot )
the storage medium you restore to doesn´t matter as far as i know, as long as the medium is compatible to it - for example ZFS is not compatible with qcow. You will find that in the link above.

I hope this informations helps.

 

[billmccollam]

thanks for the reply. I'm still processing. On issue 1 (where I have sort of locked myself into using an external drive for local and local lvm), I tried a different approach. I just installed another hdd with similar size (500GB), created a new PV, extended the PVE VG, and attempted to pvmove from the external drive to the new internal one. This seemed to be working until the pvmove halted partway though. I'm still looking into why that is (possible bad sector? this is why I wanted off the external in the first place).

On the backup front, I have backed up all the VMs. Thanks for pointing out the backup flag on VM hardware settings. This will be handy if I do decide to reinstall PVE to address issue 1. I'll have to come with a way to do this in a way that I can test the restore. PVE is currently installed on a small SSD drive and I have a spare - so I'll probably clone that before reinstalling PVE.