[SOLVED] Official way to backup proxmox VE itself?

[Mario Rossi]

No, I didn't know that but it's not a problem.
I continue to run PBS as well.

In any case I trust that the Veeam team will solve the problems, so my question remains valid.

 

[esi_y]

No, I didn't know that but it's not a problem.
I continue to run PBS as well.

In any case I trust that the Veeam team will solve the problems, so my question remains valid.

I just feel like any backing while the system is running is not going to do you any good, the configuration is all in /etc/pve which is a mounted filesystem off a running database, see my post above on how to back up that alone. Whether you choose to backup all disks, disk or files, it won't guarantee you a consistent snapshot of that database.

 

[upsangel]

Have done it twice, with slightly smaller (50-100mb?) NVME's & had no problem. Usually just the end will get truncated, which shouldn't really contain anything, assuming you started with an empty NVME for the original PVE install & hardly use the PVE OS disk for storage - as is my use case.
I find using an NMVE only to about 30 % of its capacity, greatly improves its longevity (as in years). This I believe is most cost-effective.

Hi there,
I recently tried restoring a 512GB ssd dd compressed image to a 256GB. The proxmox can boot up, but the lvm volumns can't be mounted.
Then I used gdisk to delete and create the lvm partition to the smaller size, now the proxmox can at least recongize the lv. However when I tried to resize the lv filesystem size it doesn't work, seems the empty lv space have been pre-allocated.

Probably I should shrink the partition and filesystem first, then do a dd (if dd method is still the way to go)

p.s. found this one should be helpful: https://blog.sensecodons.com/2017/03/shrinking-disk-to-migrate-to-smaller-ssd.html

update: unfortunately lvm-thin cannot be shrinked. A new thin-pool has to be re-created.

update2: I successfully do a 512GB->256GB 'migration', it's not smooth, watch out the bump:

1. after dd the 512GB img to the 256GB SSD, use gdisk to delete the lvm partition and then re-create a smaller one, watch out keeping the same UUID of the partition.
2.

lvremove /dev/pve/data
lvcreate -L 179G -n data pve
# 179G is calculated from lsblk the remaining after deducting pve-swap and pve-root on nvme0n1p3
lvconvert --type thin-pool pve/data
pvresize /dev/nvme0n1p3
reboot

from here the proxmox should recongnize the lvm-thin but nothing there.
3. cp the backup (.zst) to the new ssd's /var/lib/vz/dump/ , remove the old vms, restore the zst backup.
Done!

 

[cybericius]

Hi there,
I recently tried restoring a 512GB ssd dd compressed image to a 256GB. The proxmox can boot up, but the lvm volumns can't be mounted.
Then I used gdisk to delete and create the lvm partition to the smaller size, now the proxmox can at least recongize the lv. However when I tried to resize the lv filesystem size it doesn't work, seems the empty lv space have been pre-allocated.

Probably I should shrink the partition and filesystem first, then do a dd (if dd method is still the way to go)

p.s. found this one should be helpful: https://blog.sensecodons.com/2017/03/shrinking-disk-to-migrate-to-smaller-ssd.html

update: unfortunately lvm-thin cannot be shrinked. A new thin-pool has to be re-created.

update2: I successfully do a 512GB->256GB 'migration', it's not smooth, watch out the bump:

1. after dd the 512GB img to the 256GB SSD, use gdisk to delete the lvm partition and then re-create a smaller one, watch out keeping the same UUID of the partition.
2.

lvremove /dev/pve/data
lvcreate -L 179G -n data pve
# 179G is calculated from lsblk the remaining after deducting pve-swap and pve-root on nvme0n1p3
lvconvert --type thin-pool pve/data
pvresize /dev/nvme0n1p3
reboot

from here the proxmox should recongnize the lvm-thin but nothing there.
3. cp the backup (.zst) to the new ssd's /var/lib/vz/dump/ , remove the old vms, restore the zst backup.
Done!

How could you dd to the smaller disk? Have you used sgdisk -R=/dev/target /dev/source to replicate the GPT before executing the dd command? I'd like to see the steps for that. In theory, what you described should not work as dd cannot manage to replicate the table that would be at the end of the target disk - as it is too small. Did you just create a new GPT with gdisk?