Back up dying Proxmox HD and copy to new HD

[ceidem]

I have an aging SSD on my SuperMicro Proxmox server that hosts the OS. The VMs are on a different NVMe drive. It's set up as a one Volume Group with two Physical volumes and multiple logical volumes (swap, root, data [the lvm-thin disk that holds VMs] and LVs for each VM's drives).

I'd think that doing a backup of the system (borg to the rescue!), installing a replacement OS SSD drive and restoring is the plan. I'm not sure on how to rebuild the LVM to get everything back to the way it is now? Is it running something like a vgrestore to rebuild it using the backed up config?

 

[fireon]

Hello @ceidem. Do I understand you correctly that you have combined several drives without a raid level into a large volume group and then run the VMs on it?

 

[ceidem]

I have one VG with 2 physical drives and multiple LVs. One drive (SSD) holds the OS and Proxmox files and the other one is a NVMe with several partitions used to hold VMs.

Here is the layout:

--/dev/sda   240.06GB SSD
 |-/dev/sda1 1.03MB  BIOS boot
 |-/dev/sda2 536.87MB  EFI
 |-/dev/sda3 239.52GB  LVM
--/dev/sdb   1TB M.2 SSD
 |-/dev/sdb1 214.75GB LVM
 |-/dev/sdb2 214.75GB LVM
 |-/dev/sdb3 107.37GB LVM
 
 
root@pve:/etc/pve# vgdisplay
  --- Volume group ---
  VG Name               pve
  System ID             
  Format                lvm2
  Metadata Areas        3
  Metadata Sequence No  83
  VG Access             read/write
  VG Status             resizable
  MAX LV                0
  Cur LV                16
  Open LV               5
  Max PV                0
  Cur PV                3
  Act PV                3
  VG Size               <623.06 GiB
  PE Size               4.00 MiB
  Total PE              159503
  Alloc PE / Size       119057 / <465.07 GiB
  Free  PE / Size       40446 / 157.99 GiB
  VG UUID               Rds9ND-Grq2-4TZH-eXnW-999A-t7CR-3iq30g
  --- Physical volume ---
  PV Name               /dev/sda3
  VG Name               pve
  PV Size               <223.07 GiB / not usable <3.57 MiB
  Allocatable           yes (but full)
  PE Size               4.00 MiB
  Total PE              57105
  Free PE               0
  Allocated PE          57105
  PV UUID               l9hL5B-odtb-G7dK-cLXR-O247-npYv-cw8fsx
  
  --- Physical volume ---
  PV Name               /dev/sdb1
  VG Name               pve
  PV Size               200.00 GiB / not usable 4.00 MiB
  Allocatable           yes
  PE Size               4.00 MiB
  Total PE              51199
  Free PE               2047
  Allocated PE          49152
  PV UUID               auVv14-jLMD-lLMB-CPr1-7Y6Z-cd7g-KTQsxx
  
  --- Physical volume ---
  PV Name               /dev/sdb2
  VG Name               pve
  PV Size               200.00 GiB / not usable 4.00 MiB
  Allocatable           yes
  PE Size               4.00 MiB
  Total PE              51199
  Free PE               38399
  Allocated PE          12800
  PV UUID               WX6ATD-xTRG-7xhh-mVTB-ZE2y-aXIw-m8e0OX
 
  root@pve:/etc/pve# vgs -o +lv_size,lv_name
  VG  #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize    VFree   LSize    LV             
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g    8.00g swap           
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g  105.75g root           
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g <348.45g data           
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g   50.00g vm-100-disk-0 
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g   32.00g vm-102-disk-0 
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g   32.00g base-103-disk-0
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g   32.00g vm-104-disk-0 
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g   32.00g vm-105-disk-0 
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g   64.00g vm-106-disk-0 
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g   50.00g vm-108-disk-0 
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g   25.00g vm-101-disk-0 
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g    4.00m vm-101-disk-1 
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g   30.00g vm-101-disk-2 
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g   50.00g vm-107-disk-0 
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g   19.53g vm-109-disk-2 
  pve   3  16   0 wz--n- <623.06g 157.99g  488.28g vm-109-disk-3

 

[fireon]

Basically I would rethink the whole setup. You have two drives and one VG via these two discs. But no raid. If one disc breaks, your whole system is unusable.

A possible todotable for you could be:

• Back up VMs with vzdump/PBS
• Back up configuration from Proxmox (/etc and /etc/pve)
• Buy new additional SSDs/HDDs
• create raid (ZFS/Hardwareraid/...)
• Reinstall Proxmox
• Restore parts of the Proxmox configuration that are required manually
• Check everything is working fine
• Restore backup of the VMs

Also interesting:
https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#_system_requirements
https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#chapter_zfs