Migrating to new server

Jan 13, 2022
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Hello,
we had evaluated proxmox in development for a while. We have proxmox 5.4 on server, which we would like to "delete". We have obtained new HW and installed clean proxmox 7.1. We would like to migrate some VM machines from former hw to new one. Is there any easy/stright-forward solution?

My idea is to use VM backup and import/restore it on new server. Is there any recommended way for a such operation?

PS: I see as manual way, to create empty VMs on new proxmox installation and use clonezilla to backup/restore over network.
 
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Easiest would be to backup the '/etc' folder of your old PVE host to have a copy of all host configs like firewall rules and so on.
Then a Vzdump backup (backup using the webUI) of all guests to a external disk or network share.
You can then attach that external disk or network share to your new host, set it up as a backup storage. That backup storage then should show you a list of all backups and you can restore the guests one by one.
 
What is meant under "backup the etc"? I imagine that I would do full diff on /etc. Is it right approach? I am afraid that blindly doing rsync (replacing new, empty, server with /etc from older machine (older proxmox version) would do a bit of mess and perhaps harm.

Another question, does backup (vzdump) contain only all data from attached disks and /etc does contain definition of virtual machines (os memorry, number of cpus,...)?

PS: using git for /etc could also make sense in this approach?
 
The vzdump backups will contain the virtual disks and the VMs configuration file (so what virtual hardware to use and so on). But some stuff like firewall rules that the VMs uses is still only stored in PVEs config dir (/etc/pve).

And so, just copying over the /etc from the old host overwriting stuff one the new host isn't a good idea. But in case you want to setup stuff like firefall rules, storages and so on like before it is a good idea to atleast back the /etc folder up, so you got the old files if you need to look at them.
 
But some stuff like firewall rules that the VMs uses is still only stored in PVEs config dir (/etc/pve).
Firewall rules that are set on a guest will be part of the backup.

Firewall rules for the host will need to be migrated manually to a new server.
 
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Ah, great. Didn't know that. I thought they aren't backed up because I always needed to create them from scratch again. But I guess thats because my guests only use security groups and security group firewall rules are defined at datacenter level?
 
But I guess thats because my guests only use security groups and security group firewall rules are defined at datacenter level?
Yeah, pretty much that. DC settings are not part of the guest backup.
 
I have restored vm (/etc/pve/qemu-server/105.conf), than copied backup to new server (/var/lib/vz//dump/...). Than running restore via gui, setting storage to local-zfs (new srver is using zfs. Old one was using single disk, with lvm; i.e. lvm-local). Seems working.
Thanks for advice.
 

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