Best way to convert OS storage from single disk -> RAID1?

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BloodyIron

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Jan 14, 2013
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I'm still collecting info, but for one of the environments I am responsible for there are a lot of Proxmox VE Nodes with the OS installed on a single disk. I want to help convert the OS storage on each node to a logical RAID1 configuration. I don't yet know which nodes are using LVM for the OS storage, and which ones are using something else.

When I go through the PVE webGUI for local storage for each node I'm not seeing (yet?) a way to convert a singular OS disk to a RAID1 topology or any other topology.

Is there any way to do this with the webGUI? Or how would this "normally" be executed in the PVE ecosystem? I'm really hoping I can do this without interrupting operations or requiring a node reinstall/rebuild for each node.

I'm sure I can probably cobble a method together myself, but surely I'm not the first to want to do this. And if there is no webGUI method for this, maybe this warrants a feature request?

I'd love to hear what people have to share on this topic please! :)
 
Dunuin said:
If the node is using LVM you can't turn it into a mirror. If it is using ZFS you could do that manually via CLI (basically following paragraph "Changing a failed bootable device" but instead of using "zpool replace" a "zpool attach" is used: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/ZFS_on_Linux#_zfs_administration).
Click to expand...

For LVM is there a Proxmox VE webGUI section that is capable of converting the LVM to a Mirror? If so please point me to it as I can't find such yet.

I'm not scared of the CLI more trying to drink the kool-aid where I can so to say ;P I'm quite confident the OS storage is not on ZFS in this case but thanks for mentioning that too.
 
Dunuin said:
If the node is using LVM you can't turn it into a mirror.
Click to expand...
BloodyIron said:
For LVM is there a Proxmox VE webGUI section that is capable of converting the LVM to a Mirror? If so please point me to it as I can't find such yet.
Click to expand...
For this thing that is not possible, there is also no web GUI section to that, because it is impossible.
 
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> for one of the environments I am responsible for there are a lot of Proxmox VE Nodes with the OS installed on a single disk. I want to help convert the OS storage on each node to a logical RAID1 configuration

You should do this in stages, and concentrate on the most important ones first (Prod) - could be several weeks or more depending on how many nodes needed to convert

Backup everything on the node and Reinstall to ZFS mirror. Recommended to use 2 different makes/models of SSD so they don't both wear out around the same time. Restore your VM and network configs in /etc after re-enabling storage.

https://github.com/kneutron/ansitest/blob/master/proxmox/proxmox-recover-vm-disks-without-backup.sh

And remember you still need regular backups.

https://github.com/kneutron/ansitest/tree/master/proxmox

Look into bkpcrit script, set target to non-root separate disk or NAS. There is also a proof-of-concept script to backup/restore ZFS boot/root to a file over sshfs.
 
BloodyIron said:
For LVM is there a Proxmox VE webGUI section that is capable of converting the LVM to a Mirror? If so please point me to it as I can't find such yet.
Click to expand...
You won't find such things in the webUI. All advanced disk management has to be done manually via CLI and you should know what you are doing.

BloodyIron said:
I'm not scared of the CLI more trying to drink the kool-aid where I can so to say ;P I'm quite confident the OS storage is not on ZFS in this case but thanks for mentioning that too.
Click to expand...
Then your best bet is wiping and reinstalling those nodes.
 
1. All the VM/LXC storage is _not_ on the OS storage device. It's on Ceph or other forms of shared storage.
2. Backups are already healthy, lots of them, and are stored elsewhere (not on the PVE Cluster itself).
3. Why is wiping each node and reinstalling preferable to just converting the existing OS storage (LVM/otherwise) to RAID1/equivalent? That seems very heavy-handed.

To be clear, I am not absolutely married to webGUI for operations. Getting under the hood and doing CLI actions is nowhere near scary to me. I just wanted to ask first before taking any actual action. A sanity check if you will.

Isn't this like the whole point of LVM for a bare-metal OS? Being able to make storage reconfigurations like this without interrupting operations?

Also, thanks for those chiming in :)
 
Alright well yeah sure looks like I'll need to rebuild these nodes. I'm not seeing any realistic way to extend the existing OS storage to a RAID1/equivalent configuration. I'll probably go with ZFS Mirror. Thanks for your time everyone! I'm a bit grumpy Proxmox VE doesn't have a webGUI way to extend even a ZFS Solo drive to Mirror, but... well... it's what we "got" today.
 
BloodyIron said:
Alright well yeah sure looks like I'll need to rebuild these nodes. I'm not seeing any realistic way to extend the existing OS storage to a RAID1/equivalent configuration. I'll probably go with ZFS Mirror. Thanks for your time everyone! I'm a bit grumpy Proxmox VE doesn't have a webGUI way to extend even a ZFS Solo drive to Mirror, but... well... it's what we "got" today.
Click to expand...
Yes, not being able to administrate (simple via webUI created) ZFS pools via webUI is quite bad. All those people who wiped their pools accidentally because not understanding what they are doing using CLI. You can't even replace a failed disk of a mirror via webUI and thats even more important/common.
 
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Dunuin said:
Yes, not being able to administrate (simple via webUI created) ZFS pools via webUI is quite bad. All those people who wiped their pools accidentally because not understanding what they are doing using CLI. You can't even replace a failed disk of a mirror via webUI and thats even more important/common.
Click to expand...
YIKES
 
It's pretty much only a matter of development and integration testing. TrueNAS and the like has (I understand) a rather nice GUI interface to ZFS. You could conceivably import your pool into that sort of environment and take advantage.

Proxmox, being more focused on acting as a hypervisor, has not (yet) chosen to put that kind of feature into its web interface - and ZFS is only one of several options.

However, the code is running on top of Debian, and is open-source. Nothing is stopping you from requesting a feature development (kind of a long shot, and subject to prioritization and available resources) or actually hiring a developer/team to implement it for you. Shoot, put up a Gofundme and I might contrib to it if it's realistic.

https://github.com/proxmox

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Open_Source

https://www.proxmox.com/en/about/developers
 
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