Hardware Upgrade

[Üzeyir Emanet]

Grettings,

I want to increase the hardware of the proxmox cluster structure(CPU, RAM). How can I do this without closing the system?

 

[MagicFab]

My suggestion :

1. Live migrate VMs off the node you want to upgrade. Use the GUI or qm migrate to move them to other nodes in the cluster.
2. Power down the target node, upgrade the hardware (CPU, RAM), and boot it back up. It will automatically rejoin the cluster.
3. Migrate VMs back or rebalance workloads as needed.

Some tips / details:

• Make sure you have shared storage (like Ceph, NFS, or iSCSI) so VMs can move freely between nodes.
• If you're using local storage, consider replication, backup + restore or disk migration.
• Configure HA (High Availability) if you need automatic failover during maintenance.

No need to shut down the whole system, just upgrade one node at a time.

Please share back your experience!

---

Fabián Rodríguez | Le Goût du Libre Inc. | Montreal, Canada | Mastodon
Proxmox Silver Partner, server and desktop enterprise support in French, English and Spanish

 

[powersupport]

Hi,

You can’t directly add more CPU or RAM to a running node without a restart, since the hardware needs to be recognized by the system. To avoid downtime for your workloads, you can use Proxmox features like live migration: move the VMs/containers to other nodes in the cluster, then shut down the node, upgrade the hardware, and bring it back online. After that, you can migrate the VMs back.

 

[Üzeyir Emanet]

My suggestion :

1. Live migrate VMs off the node you want to upgrade. Use the GUI or qm migrate to move them to other nodes in the cluster.
2. Power down the target node, upgrade the hardware (CPU, RAM), and boot it back up. It will automatically rejoin the cluster.
3. Migrate VMs back or rebalance workloads as needed.

Some tips / details:

• Make sure you have shared storage (like Ceph, NFS, or iSCSI) so VMs can move freely between nodes.
• If you're using local storage, consider replication, backup + restore or disk migration.
• Configure HA (High Availability) if you need automatic failover during maintenance.

No need to shut down the whole system, just upgrade one node at a time.

Please share back your experience!

---

Fabián Rodríguez | Le Goût du Libre Inc. | Montreal, Canada | Mastodon
Proxmox Silver Partner, server and desktop enterprise support in French, English and Spanish

So can I make changes in VM?

 

[Üzeyir Emanet]

Hi,

You can’t directly add more CPU or RAM to a running node without a restart, since the hardware needs to be recognized by the system. To avoid downtime for your workloads, you can use Proxmox features like live migration: move the VMs/containers to other nodes in the cluster, then shut down the node, upgrade the hardware, and bring it back online. After that, you can migrate the VMs back.

So can I make changes in VM?

 

[Onslow]

What changes in VM do you mean?

 

[Üzeyir Emanet]

What changes in VM do you mean?

CPU, RAM and Memory

 

[leesteken]

CPU, RAM and Memory

It depends on whether the operating system inside the VM supports it and whether you configured the VM and operating system for hotplug: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Hotplug_(qemu_disk,nic,cpu,memory) . Otherwise, you need to shut down the VM and restart it from Proxmox (a reboot from inside the VM is not enough).