Duplicate a dying SSD (LVM-Thin) drive with new identical SSD

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btodd71

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Jan 24, 2022
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Hello,

I've inherited a ProxMox server. It currently has approximately 10 VM's running on it. But I got an alert that one of the SSD drives (only two in the entire server) that houses the VM's is dying. So I bought a brand new SSD same size same make model, everything. But currently I have it connected to the server using USB. My question, is there a way I can replicate or duplicate the old SSD and copy all of that data (vm's) to the new drive. I don't know how to format the new drive or anything, I am a noob, sorry. Was hoping to use Clonezilla but that didn't work, not sure how the old drive is formatted, but could clone it. Was hoping that maybe there is a linux command I could use? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Bill
 
Caution: data loss is possible if you execute procedure incorrectly. If you are not confident in success and this is a valuable environment, I recommend reaching out to a consultant.

Based only on the information you provided, the high level approach would be to:
- stop all VMs
- stop proxmox services:
systemctl stop pvedaemon
systemctl stop pveproxy
systemctl stop pvestatd
- unmount the disk (it should not be mounted)
- use "dd" to copy the context of the disk. The most basic command line: dd if=/dev/INPUTBADDEVICE of=/dev/NEWDEVICEONUSB bs=8k
- shutdown the server, remove old disk, connect the new one.
- boot the server.

References:
https://linuxhint.com/clone-disk-using-dd-linux/
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-mount-an-lvm-volume-partition-command/

Good luck

Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox
 
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If that SSD is just a normal disk without raid, not used for booting or something like that and it is only storing VMs/LXCs I think the easiet would be to create new LVM-Thin storage on the new SSD and then just move the VMs/LXCs from the old to the new storage. Both can be done in webUI.
 
Last edited:
Dunuin said:
If that SSD is just storing VMs/LXCs and isn't for example used for boot the I think the easiet would be to create new LVM-Thin storage on the new SSD and then just move the VMs/LXCs from the old to the new storage. Both can be done in webUI.
Click to expand...
how hard is it to just create lvm-thin storage? Because yeah, probably just move those VM's if that is pretty easy?
 
Its just clicking buttons in the webUI.
YourNode -> Disks –> select your new Disk –> Wipe (this will delete everything on that disk so make sure to wipe the correct one). I think wiping disks is a new PVE7 feature. If you are running a older version you might need to manually remove all existing partitions on your new disk first (fdisk, wipefs or parted can be used in CLI for that). Then YourNode -> Disks -> LVM-Thin –> Create Thin Pool. Select your new wiped disk there.
After that you should have a new LVM-Thin Storage on the new Disk. And when selecting YourNode -> YourVM -> Hardware there should be a Move disk button which you can use to move the virtual disks from the old storage to your new LVM-Thin storage.
 
Last edited:
Dunuin said:
If that SSD is just a normal disk without raid, not used for booting or something like that and it is only storing VMs/LXCs I think the easiet would be to create new LVM-Thin storage on the new SSD and then just move the VMs/LXCs from the old to the new storage. Both can be done in webUI.
Click to expand...
Unless OP plans to stay on a disk connected to USB, they still need to open up the server and replace the disk. Either method is valid, however I think the "migration" one also depends on the version of PVE that OP inherited. Not all options could be available.
As usual, there are a lot of variables.

Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox
 
Currently we are running 6.4-13 so not sure the WebGUI has all of those features. I may just look into using DD method. But had wanted to try something possibly easier. :)
 
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