New Proxmox as a replacement for ESXi

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LerryV2

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Jan 3, 2025
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Here at work we use ESXi and are looking to replace it with Proxmox since Broadcom is hell bent on killing itself.

In the test setup I have I have server running proxmox that I was able to import VMs from ESXi very easily. Worked great. I wanted to similar a failure and reinstall Proxmox on a clean drive and Import the VMs, something thats very easy to do in ESXi.

The issue that Im running into is
1. How do I import VMs from an old install to a clean install? The VMs are stored on a separate drive then what Proxmox is running

2. When I swapped back to the OG install since I couldn't get the import working the old installed doesn't see the VMs on the pool that has them installed on. It sees the pool, but doesn't see anything on it.

So far things seem great, just running into the issue here with trying to simulate a recovery.
 
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LerryV2 said:
1. How do I import VMs from an old install to a clean install? The VMs are stored on a separate drive then what Proxmox is running
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As long as you can mount the store housing your vdisks, all you'd need to do is either restore the configuration files (located in /etc/pve/qemu-server/) and as long as the store is named the same in pve they would just work. otherwise, you can still do it manually created new vm's with the same vmid as the original and attache the disk.

LerryV2 said:
2. When I swapped back to the OG install since I couldn't get the import working the old installed doesn't see the VMs on the pool that has them installed on. It sees the pool, but doesn't see anything on it.
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as mentioned above, the datastore houses JUST the vdisks, not their config files- so naturally the vm's will not be "seen."
 
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So if I have disk A that has proxmox installed on it and disk B with my VMs I have to import the pool that has the VMs installed on it (disk B) and then on disk A with the fresh install of proxmox make a new VM with the same VM ID and it will auto import ? I guess the thing to do would be to make sure the qemu-server file is backed up some what routinely if there is a chance it could die.
 
it will not import by itself, since pve does not know what your intentions are. What will happen is if there is a matching vmid in the virtual disk names, they will show up in pve as "unused" for the vm in question. You will need to add it to the config just as you would a new disk.

LerryV2 said:
I guess the thing to do would be to make sure the qemu-server file is backed up some what routinely if there is a chance it could die.
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backup functionality is built into pve. Use it. https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Backup_and_Restore
 
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So when I do ZFS List to show the ZFS pools to import it says "no dataset available"

So "zpool list" showed me the pool

"zpool import -f POOL_NAME" imported the pool, so its no longer showing that its greyed out in the tree, but when I go to the VM Disks it shows nothing. Is this where I need to import that file or make a new VM with the old VM ID? and if I do, do I need the ISO and know the old system configs or can I just make that junk and it will auto populate that when it rebuilds?
 
Awesome so those show up now.

The only 'move' I know of was in the hardware setting in the VM itself, which I cant access, just the qcow


1736458920979.png
 
1. create a vm, with vmid the same as your respective disk- eg 100. enter all values BUT DO NOT CREATE A DISK.

when done, your disk will appear here:
1736460311236.png

select it and click edit

1736460346882.png
Map your bus type/id and other functions and off you go.
 
LnxBil said:
You can also just extract the config from the backup so that you don't have to recreate it from scratch.
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I dont have a backup, but Im going to setup a Proxmox backup server and try to backup and recover that way. I was not successful doing it the manual way
 
LerryV2 said:
I dont have a backup, but Im going to setup a Proxmox backup server and try to backup and recover that way. I was not successful doing it the manual way
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PBS is awesome! Invest the time and also try to test an external backup of your PBS, e.g. external disk (new feature in the newest version).
 
LnxBil said:
PBS is awesome! Invest the time and also try to test an external backup of your PBS, e.g. external disk (new feature in the newest version).
Click to expand...
Im starting to see how powerful it is. Im really liking it. I might have missed it but is there a guide to mirror the VMs to say Synology or offsite storage like backblaze?
 
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