Disk usage confusion - Why is Proxmox VE doing this?

[B0M0A0K]

I have a new installation of Proxmox VE 8.3.3 and am using two external Drives for VM storage and backups etc.

When I create a new VM, I start by highlighting the storage device I want PM to use when creating this machine. I make sure that the storage device I want to use is picked in the 'Disks' section. I am expecting the VM to exists on the external drive and run from there, but that's not what seems to be happening.

I created a new Linux instance and selected the external storage device I wanted to use. Completed the installation and tested the running VM instance. Out of interest I used the Shell to navigate to the external storage location 'Terra' and checked the images folder for the hdd. The storage is there, just as I had expected.

Out of interest, I then navigated to /mnt/pve/Terra/images/1101 (the VMID) and it also contains the HDD file. An identical copy. I tested this by renaming the hdd file in the /mnt/pve/Terra/images/1101 location, then I rebooted the PM installation and when it came back online, attempted to start up the new VM. It failed to boot and just kept cycling back to the "Guest not running" message in the console.

So my question is this. Why has PM created the VM in pve as well as my external storage device - it seems to be creating the VM where it wants to regardless of where I asked it to create the VM?

I am only a week into using Proxmox VE and it's entirely possible that I just don't understand how Proxmox VE is doing things.

I'm happy to be enlightened if someone could explain it to me (please)?

 

[Fantu]

If you renamed the vm disk file from cli is normal that proxmox don't find it and fails to boot vm.
If you want to rename manually you should also do a "qm rescan" after and set the "new disk" in proxmox gui that will show as unused.

 

[B0M0A0K]

@Fantu Thanks, That was just a test (renaming) so I could see which file location was controlling the qcow2 file. The question remains, if the 2cowq file has to exist in /mnt/pve what's the point of suggesting during setup that I can use the external drive for file storage?

 

[Fantu]

It's not clear, you should know all the operations you've done. I think what could be useful is to see what disk the vm configuration actually points to.
For the full vm configuration from cli can be useful:

qm config <vmid>

When you create vm, add new disk or move disk will ask for storage and if you have multiple you can select which use.
When you move disk to another storage from gui there is a flag to select if delete the source, if not selected you must delete source manually after.
Another thing, when you have different disk on the vm config you will need to change also boot order setting for use it

 

[B0M0A0K]

@Fantu Thanks for your help.

With regards to "When you move disk to another storage from gui there is a flag to select if delete the source" - that may be the important thing here, as I did not check the box to delete the original. I wonder if checking the box would force the system to update to the new location.

 

[Fantu]

Move to another storage may require long time (based on disk size, storage speed etc..), you can see the process in the task and when finished will point to the new location.