I was thrilled when I discovered Proxmox, because if I understood what I was reading correctly, it represented a major opportunity to save money with the increasing sprawl of Windows servers/systems I had to maintain for a client. I've now gotten 2 of 3 containers running, and into production to either replace failed equipment, or meet new demands, and I am shy of the last one by the temporary lack of a Windows 2000 Pro ISO image.
The reason I am writing this is because it has been a VERY bumpy road for the last week, just getting to this point, and there are some items that apparently those who are accustomed to working with Linux either don't have to bother with, or don't realize that they should be EMPHASIZED in the documentation for those who follow without said experience. There's also a bug or two to be found, bypassed, and or fixed.
I started this adventure with a Dell PE 1950 that easily exceeded the requirements for full container KVM installation, and with very high expectations. I downloaded the new/latest 1.5 iso image, and burned to CD thinking I'd done my homework, and would have my old dead server back up and running on the new equipment in no time. NOT!!!
Proxmox 1.5 ISO not only wouldn't boot to the license screen on that machine, it wouldn't boot to the license screen on my older systems, which don't fully support KVM due to a lack of Intel-VT or AMD equivalent CPUs... Debug showed that it found all of my hardware properly, and even found my NICs, but somehow, wouldn't install.
The only similar posting I found in the forum with the same symptoms was with someone trying to install on hardware running an Intel Atom CPU, which I'm not too sure why someone would want to do that anyway... Nonetheless, I followed their solution, downloaded 1.4 ISO, burned it to CD, and Voila!! it installed, and it allowed me to create KVMs on the hardware that supported that. I then (foolishly?) tried to follow the rest of the instructions, and do an update to 1.5, and found that none of my VMs or KVMs would start anymore (2.6.32)
Further reading of the forums indicated that others had problems with the latest kernel in 1.5, and had to back down to 2.6.24 or earlier to restore function.
What hardware is out there that the "Latest release" version ISO actually works on, and why is 1.5 even released if it won't work out of the gate on mainstream hardware???
In any case, for those who are truly new to this and new to Linux, there are some very important pitfalls you will face if you aren't careful. Until proven otherwise, it is probably NOT a good idea to start off with the latest release, but start with getting 1.4, and installing from that first.
Then update your sources, and do a full update to 1.5, but THEN, downgrade your kernel by installing something older that is known to work, like the 2.6.24 or earlier kernels.
You'd need to type at a bash? prompt logged in as root the following:
(If you don't know how to get to a shell on your Proxmox server as root, you have much, much more reading to do, and well beyond the scope of what I can type here)
(This next bit applies mostly to those trying to install Windows VMs in containers)
The documentation states that the e1000 NIC is a good choice for a Windows guest/OS, and that you should download the latest drivers from Intel's website to use it... What they DON'T tell you is that it will appear to work if you just choose it and use the native drivers, but it won't really work well enough to use, and you will be hard-pressed at that time to go to Intel's site to download any updates (or any other site). DOWNLOAD THE LATEST INTEL DRIVERS FOR WHATEVER PLATFORM YOU ARE WANTING TO RUN, BUILD YOUR OWN ISO IMAGE WITH THOSE FILES, AS PREP BEFORE CREATING YOUR KVM, AND INSTALL DRIVERS FROM THAT IMAGE, OR YOU WILL BE WASTING YOUR TIME, SPINNING YOUR WHEELS, AND OTHERWISE FRUSTRATED.
The documentation is FAR too polite on the suggestion to get the latest drivers, and by the time you find out, you're already up a creek without a paddle...
The guides to server migration have so far, been utterly incapable of allowing me to successfully migrate anything but a great deal of time to the shredder. I have an old Windows2000 Pro VM currently running on VMWorkstation 5.5x, that as soon as I find the system CD for, I will just replace and hope for the best, because nothing I've been able to do with that imported/converted vmdk file has resulted in anything that would run long enough to even give me a blue screen error before rebooting.
The Windows 2000 Terminal Server was installed clean, because I wasn't willing to even try migrating that physical machine, when I could re-install the applications and OS in less time than I'd wasted trying to migrate the vmdk on the one VM. The Windows 2003 Terminal Server was installed clean, as it only needed to have Office & Quickbooks installed on it anyway, and installing that directly is waaaay faster than fighting with migration -- I sure hope it works well for someone.
(This customer has a few legacy applications that will not run on anything newer than Windows 2000, so they still need to keep a few of those systems alive, but the last version upgrade of Quickbooks -2010 won't run on Windows 2000, so they needed an additional & newer server to run it on)
As a newbie to Proxmox and probably to Linux, you may encounter some occasional references in the forum for links to forum posts which are dead links, and I can only guess that the forum used to be on the same domain as the main product was, but was moved to its own subdomain, and it is unlikely that the old forum posts were (and may never be??) updated to the new domain, so be wary of that, but don't stop reading.
I don't know if I will ever truly sort out the migration issues, because the paying customers are back up and running without doing so, and their main server, running SBS 2003 is healthy, and not needing replacement anytime soon. I have some need around my own office for this to work but not sure I have the time to put toward getting there at my current rate of progress. In my real-world testing of the migrations both from a physical machine & a VMWare VM, it is not quite functional, although YMMV... Unless something is a Windows Domain Controller or similar, it may not be worth bothering with trying to migrate, and you may have less downtime by just installing new.
(My $0.02), and I hope that this post helps at least one person from wasting day(s) of frustration and/or panic over whether they made the right choice, or if they might lose their job or their customer over the choice to go with Proxmox... The management or customer often doesn't want to know why something doesn't work, they just want it to work, like the IT dept. promised it would.
Thanks again for a wonderful project, it shows a great deal of promise, and was a God-send to a non-profit organization that just couldn't afford to go buy a new server just because some new software requirement deprecated their old software/OS, but they couldn't abandon the past for other software that was stuck there. Maybe someday the state government will update its DOS-based software interface they're required to use, and then they can switch to something more modern
The reason I am writing this is because it has been a VERY bumpy road for the last week, just getting to this point, and there are some items that apparently those who are accustomed to working with Linux either don't have to bother with, or don't realize that they should be EMPHASIZED in the documentation for those who follow without said experience. There's also a bug or two to be found, bypassed, and or fixed.
I started this adventure with a Dell PE 1950 that easily exceeded the requirements for full container KVM installation, and with very high expectations. I downloaded the new/latest 1.5 iso image, and burned to CD thinking I'd done my homework, and would have my old dead server back up and running on the new equipment in no time. NOT!!!
Proxmox 1.5 ISO not only wouldn't boot to the license screen on that machine, it wouldn't boot to the license screen on my older systems, which don't fully support KVM due to a lack of Intel-VT or AMD equivalent CPUs... Debug showed that it found all of my hardware properly, and even found my NICs, but somehow, wouldn't install.
The only similar posting I found in the forum with the same symptoms was with someone trying to install on hardware running an Intel Atom CPU, which I'm not too sure why someone would want to do that anyway... Nonetheless, I followed their solution, downloaded 1.4 ISO, burned it to CD, and Voila!! it installed, and it allowed me to create KVMs on the hardware that supported that. I then (foolishly?) tried to follow the rest of the instructions, and do an update to 1.5, and found that none of my VMs or KVMs would start anymore (2.6.32)
Further reading of the forums indicated that others had problems with the latest kernel in 1.5, and had to back down to 2.6.24 or earlier to restore function.
What hardware is out there that the "Latest release" version ISO actually works on, and why is 1.5 even released if it won't work out of the gate on mainstream hardware???
In any case, for those who are truly new to this and new to Linux, there are some very important pitfalls you will face if you aren't careful. Until proven otherwise, it is probably NOT a good idea to start off with the latest release, but start with getting 1.4, and installing from that first.
Then update your sources, and do a full update to 1.5, but THEN, downgrade your kernel by installing something older that is known to work, like the 2.6.24 or earlier kernels.
You'd need to type at a bash? prompt logged in as root the following:
Code:
# apt-get update
# apt-get upgrade
# apt-get dist-upgrade
# apt-get install proxmox-ve-2.6.24(This next bit applies mostly to those trying to install Windows VMs in containers)
The documentation states that the e1000 NIC is a good choice for a Windows guest/OS, and that you should download the latest drivers from Intel's website to use it... What they DON'T tell you is that it will appear to work if you just choose it and use the native drivers, but it won't really work well enough to use, and you will be hard-pressed at that time to go to Intel's site to download any updates (or any other site). DOWNLOAD THE LATEST INTEL DRIVERS FOR WHATEVER PLATFORM YOU ARE WANTING TO RUN, BUILD YOUR OWN ISO IMAGE WITH THOSE FILES, AS PREP BEFORE CREATING YOUR KVM, AND INSTALL DRIVERS FROM THAT IMAGE, OR YOU WILL BE WASTING YOUR TIME, SPINNING YOUR WHEELS, AND OTHERWISE FRUSTRATED.
The documentation is FAR too polite on the suggestion to get the latest drivers, and by the time you find out, you're already up a creek without a paddle...
The guides to server migration have so far, been utterly incapable of allowing me to successfully migrate anything but a great deal of time to the shredder. I have an old Windows2000 Pro VM currently running on VMWorkstation 5.5x, that as soon as I find the system CD for, I will just replace and hope for the best, because nothing I've been able to do with that imported/converted vmdk file has resulted in anything that would run long enough to even give me a blue screen error before rebooting.
The Windows 2000 Terminal Server was installed clean, because I wasn't willing to even try migrating that physical machine, when I could re-install the applications and OS in less time than I'd wasted trying to migrate the vmdk on the one VM. The Windows 2003 Terminal Server was installed clean, as it only needed to have Office & Quickbooks installed on it anyway, and installing that directly is waaaay faster than fighting with migration -- I sure hope it works well for someone.
(This customer has a few legacy applications that will not run on anything newer than Windows 2000, so they still need to keep a few of those systems alive, but the last version upgrade of Quickbooks -2010 won't run on Windows 2000, so they needed an additional & newer server to run it on)
As a newbie to Proxmox and probably to Linux, you may encounter some occasional references in the forum for links to forum posts which are dead links, and I can only guess that the forum used to be on the same domain as the main product was, but was moved to its own subdomain, and it is unlikely that the old forum posts were (and may never be??) updated to the new domain, so be wary of that, but don't stop reading.
I don't know if I will ever truly sort out the migration issues, because the paying customers are back up and running without doing so, and their main server, running SBS 2003 is healthy, and not needing replacement anytime soon. I have some need around my own office for this to work but not sure I have the time to put toward getting there at my current rate of progress. In my real-world testing of the migrations both from a physical machine & a VMWare VM, it is not quite functional, although YMMV... Unless something is a Windows Domain Controller or similar, it may not be worth bothering with trying to migrate, and you may have less downtime by just installing new.
(My $0.02), and I hope that this post helps at least one person from wasting day(s) of frustration and/or panic over whether they made the right choice, or if they might lose their job or their customer over the choice to go with Proxmox... The management or customer often doesn't want to know why something doesn't work, they just want it to work, like the IT dept. promised it would.
Thanks again for a wonderful project, it shows a great deal of promise, and was a God-send to a non-profit organization that just couldn't afford to go buy a new server just because some new software requirement deprecated their old software/OS, but they couldn't abandon the past for other software that was stuck there. Maybe someday the state government will update its DOS-based software interface they're required to use, and then they can switch to something more modern