Can I keep my 'data' volume when upgrading Proxmox?

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Dotsoltecti

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Mar 22, 2021
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As far as I can see, the Proxmox installer does not offer an option to leave an existing 'data' (lvm-thin) volume as is. I would suggest a more 'intelligent' Proxmox-installer when it comes to partition management: 1/ offer to keep the existing 'data' volume intact: and 2/ display a little bit more information about the physical hard drives. Is something like this being considered to be developed?

I might be doing something wrong, but over the past weekend, I upgraded from Proxmox 5 to 6. I have a single physical server with 2x 3TB WD RED drives. The first drive holds the Proxmox-installation (1VM at the moment) and the 'data' volume. The second hard disk is purely for backup (I was using rsync/rsnapshot).

To perform the upgrade I had to:
  • perform a full backup of my existing VM to the second drive. Since I am limited in hard drive space, I had to wipe the second drive, leaving me for a couple of hours without a backup of my precious files :( (+/- 12 hours for 2.5TB)
  • physically detach the second drive, since the Proxmox-installer gives no clue which one of my identical drives was /dev/sda or /dev/sdb
  • perform a full restore of the VM (again +/- 12 hours)
All of this could have been avoided if the Proxmox-installer presented me with an option to leave the 'data' volume intact. I get that the rest of the partitions/volumes need to be wiped, since Proxmox is a type 1 hypervisor, but the scorched-earth approach to reformat the whole drive seems a bit excessive. I know I could install Proxmox on top of eg. debian, giving me access to a custom partition scheme, but this would leave me with in my opinion a suboptimal solution (type 2 hypervisor, where the OS itself is maintained by another group).

Apart from that, everything went without a single problem. :cool:
 
would leave me with in my opinion a suboptimal solution (type 2 hypervisor,
Click to expand...

I think I see what you mean with the type 1 and type 2 hypervisor idea. However, if you install Proxmox VE on an existing Debian Buster as described in the documentation, it will not be inferior to a installation from the ISO.

where the OS itself is maintained by another group
Click to expand...
This is always the case. If you install Proxmox VE with the ISO you will still have something like this for the "base OS"
Code: 
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian buster main contrib
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib

# security updates
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib
in your sources. Just as if you install Debian and then add the Proxmox VE repositories.
 
Ok, I get your point that both approaches are technically equal.

Still, it would be great if the installer offered to retain the 'data' volume and the necessary proxmox-config files (/etc/pve etc.). In my case, this would reduce the upgrade process to a matter of minutes (30?) instead to a minimum of hours necessary for restoring all VM's.
 
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