Pre-Upgrade methodology sanity check.

[The Corpse of Elvis]

Hi all,

I'm just prepping to update my Proxmox server to the latest version, mainly in response to the bug found in ZFS. My backups are a little bit old and for reasons that I won't go into, my options are either to not update Proxmox until I can make a backup (which may be as long as in the new year), or to proceed with the update without making a more recent backup first. But... I think that due to my server's configuration, the risks are relatively minimal, though I would I'd appreciate some second opinions / sanity checks please.

My server has two ZFS pools. A flash based BOOT pool consisting of a mirrored vdev. And a "TANK" pool consisting of a RAIDz2 vdev of spinning rust. All my LXCs and VMs are located on the BOOT pool, and the TANK pool is used solely for data. When my VMs and LXCs aren't running, no data should be / is written to TANK. Either before or after the pending update, I want to upgrade my BOOT pool by zfs detaching one disk at a time, and then replacing said disk with a new, 2TB NVMe disk. Which raises a question in my mind, which is the reason for this thread.

With the goal of reducing any risks inherent with any update when you don't have a recent backup, does this workflow make sense and mitigate my risks?

1. Stop all LXCs and VMs.
2. Export my TANK pool
3. Detach one of the disks in the BOOT pool.
4. Power down the server.
5. Remove power from the TANK pool (so that the spinning rust doesn't have to spin up for no reason).
6. Remove and replace the disk that was detached from the BOOT pool.
7. Reboot the server.
8. Resilver BOOT.
9. Perform the Proxmox 7 to 8 upgrade, following the process as described in the wiki page.
10. Reboot and see whether anything hits the fan.
11. If all is okay, power down the server and reconnect power to the TANK pool.
12. Reboot and import TANK.
13. Start everything back up.

One other little subject I'd like some advice on is whether it matters if I use SSH or access my server's console via IPMI?

 

[The Corpse of Elvis]

I forgot to mention or make explicit my reasoning.

The idea is that if anything goes wrong with the upgrade, then I can always swap the BOOT pool out for the disk that was removed from the BOOT pool's vdev, in 3 and 6.