Best way to move VMs from one server to another?

[revvr]

I recently added a more powerful rig to my setup in order to move virtual machines that use the most resources on my tiny n5105 over to the 3900x.

I'm wondering what the best way of moving existing VMs is. I see options to migrate, clone, restore from a backup, but I don't really know what the best option here is. Furthermore, it seems that when I add these two machines to a cluster, they really depend on each other for many things and I'm not sure I can break that bond if I have to without everything going to hell. For example, if I want to simply retire the old node (N5105), can I do that without messing things up?

Any recommendations?

 

[leesteken]

Two node cluster are always troublesome. Just backup the VM, copy the backup over the network and restore the VM on the other system.

 

[revvr]

Before I read your comment, I ventured into clustering these nodes. I did have backups stored remotely, so I tested restoring some backups and I also tested migrating. Everything worked great and I was up and running within minutes. I was actually surprised how well it went.

So now these two are linked. If at some point I want to break that link to retire the slower machine, will that be problematic? If it matters the old machine is the first node of the cluster; I connected the newer machine to the older one.

 

[leesteken]

Before I read your comment, I ventured into clustering these nodes. I did have backups stored remotely, so I tested restoring some backups and I also tested migrating. Everything worked great and I was up and running within minutes. I was actually surprised how well it went.

That's not good news...

So now these two are linked. If at some point I want to break that link to retire the slower machine, will that be problematic? If it matters the old machine is the first node of the cluster; I connected the newer machine to the older one.

As soon as you shut down one system (or it fails), the other will be in read-only mode because it does not have quorum. Please search the forum for the threads about problems with two-node clusters.

 

[revvr]

That's not good news...

As soon as you shut down one system (or it fails), the other will be in read-only mode because it does not have quorum. Please search the forum for the threads about problems with two-node clusters.

That makes sense; I did not think of that in advance.

It seems like I can either:

a) Keep both of the running all the time
b) Delete the cluster and keep them separate
c) Add a third node (Raspberry Pi or maybe virtualize in my Synology NAS, both run 24/7) to ensure there is always quorum?

I actually really liked how Proxmox allows you to move VMs around via migrate and control the cluster from a single interface. Realistically, in time, I will likely decomission the older machine as the newer one can handle everything it did. So B would be the way to go? Is that doable?