How / where is VM configuration stored? (for disaster recovery, loss of rpool, etc.)

[jaysol]

Assumming these hypothetical circumstances:

- Standalone PVE server (no HA/cluster)
- rpool crashed, server won't boot, PVE can't launch.
- Must build new standalone PVE from scratch
- Have recent full backups of each VM hosted on the failed PVE

I assuming one will be missing (and requiring) the configurations of the VM's themselves? (i.e. disks, nics/virtual macs, other settings, etc.)

Is there some place these are kept within the system so that they could be backed up and re-imported into a new/replacement PVE prior to restoration of VM(s) from backup?

Other than the VM settings would there be anything else to consider in this situation?

Maybe Proxmox team at some point would consider dumping VM settings to restorable file with/in backup directoy at same time? Though I understand cluster/HA would resolve this, but because of MS licensing, it's an expensive PITA to use PVE w/Windows.

 

[narrateourale]

If you use the integrated backup tool (vzdump on the CLI) and create backups of your guests, you will have all needed configs for that guest. Try restoring a backup to a new VMID and it will all be there.

The PVE node specific settings are all found at /etc/pve (even the VM configs) and the network config is at /etc/network/interfaces.

There are a few threads in the forum talking about what to back up on the node for disaster recovery. TBH though, in most situations these settings are not that complicated and can be recreated when reinstalling PVE.

 

[jaysol]

Great! I We are using the backup tool (vzdump files) but have only tried to recover to the the same/existing VM. Good to know it has what is needed within. I'll try to restore one of these to a different PVE server to see what it looks like. Thanks!