Proxmox Server VE on a Desktop Computer is hanging randomly

[arxaios]

Good day to all,

I have 6 months ago installed a Proxmox Server on my Desktop PC and since then I have a lot of hangs - freezing when only 3 VMS (2 Ubuntu - 1 Debian from Templates) running on it without too much load , all updates to the latest Kernel versions and experience RANDOMLY Freezing of the entire machine which it needs hardware reset to become back on line.!! On logs there is nothing , nothing at lot .!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well I am done with it and I will switch back to the good old VirtualBox and windows , sorry to say , but my system was better .....I have read a tone off documentation and I realized that this virtual is not for PC Desktop Computers I do not know about bigger systems or cluster related machines BUT in my opinion is not so reliable yet to be used on Desktop PC yet.! It is very heavy and I realized that if a VM is slightly needs resources bigger than a system can provide AT A MOMENT , the system hangs terribly and needs hardware reset to be revived again...very frustrating if you want to have your own system at home..!!

First of all I want to say that my system is running smoothly with 3 VMs and according to the Proxmox Server Graphics and Console and my VM's are running on full load the pve Server is working fine at 68-70% ..!! So no problem on loads according to the Proxmox Server it self. (Reliable or Not ...I do not have any other optical notification to check this besides graphical and console alike) Everything is linux based systems so no problems there either. No CPU crap on BIOS and no Hardware issues because of working before with no problems on different virtualization .!

So I am thinking to believe that there is something else with this Virtualization Solution ...I also came across with others on line and have similar problems with me...! Unexpected Freezing with NO LOGS at all.!!

And now some of you will say and it is obvious that the hardware is wrong...something is wrong to the hardware...memories or cpu or io devices or GOD knows what..!! And I say that is something wrong with the software.Why not???
Can anyone say any different??? Yesterday night I have received a phone call from a collie of mine which switched to this virtual software on a cluster level and from now then he is always on phone with support.!

I do not want to say that is a bad solution ..on the contrary it is a very nice try but it is not for me .! I really want your opinion on this...Thank you.

 

[_gabriel]

are you using zfs ?

 

[arxaios]

No..!!

 

[UdoB]

I do not want to say that is a bad solution ..on the contrary it is a very nice try but it is not for me .!

Maybe.

This is a software stack mainly meant to be used by professionals with enterprise hardware - those are the paying customers that make development of PVE possible. (My personal recognition.)

That said: I have a Homelab with a conglomerate of "normal" hardware (down to cheap single-board-computers and USB-disks side-by-side with Threadripper with Enterprise SSDs) - and PVE is by far the best software I could get for this. For free! (My professional use case runs on expensive server-hardware.)

PVE has a lot of capabilities and a lot of (highly recommended) requirements - look for ECC for reliable Ram (avoid over-commitment!), ZFS/Raid to get redundancy and a "Cluster" for a distributed system with High-Availability and reliability. Do not forget a separate Backup mechanism like e.g. PBS. And without an independent monitoring/logging facility some problems (that will occur) are hard to diagnose.

But also note that this is NOT a PVE specific problem but is true for each and every virtualization system which shall fulfill similar tasks and expectations regarding reliability. If you use too cheap a hardware with too low specs every software may fail earlier or later...

So... if this overwhelms you it is absolutely recommended to go for a simpler solution - PVE might be total overkill.

And do not forget: have fun!

 

[Neobin]

Good day to all,

I have 6 months ago installed a Proxmox Server on my Desktop PC and since then I have a lot of hangs - freezing when only 3 VMS (2 Ubuntu - 1 Debian from Templates) running on it without too much load , all updates to the latest Kernel versions and experience RANDOMLY Freezing of the entire machine which it needs hardware reset to become back on line.!! On logs there is nothing , nothing at lot .!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well I am done with it and I will switch back to the good old VirtualBox and windows , sorry to say , but my system was better .....I have read a tone off documentation and I realized that this virtual is not for PC Desktop Computers I do not know about bigger systems or cluster related machines BUT in my opinion is not so reliable yet to be used on Desktop PC yet.! It is very heavy and I realized that if a VM is slightly needs resources bigger than a system can provide AT A MOMENT , the system hangs terribly and needs hardware reset to be revived again...very frustrating if you want to have your own system at home..!!

First of all I want to say that my system is running smoothly with 3 VMs and according to the Proxmox Server Graphics and Console and my VM's are running on full load the pve Server is working fine at 68-70% ..!! So no problem on loads according to the Proxmox Server it self. (Reliable or Not ...I do not have any other optical notification to check this besides graphical and console alike) Everything is linux based systems so no problems there either. No CPU crap on BIOS and no Hardware issues because of working before with no problems on different virtualization .!

So I am thinking to believe that there is something else with this Virtualization Solution ...I also came across with others on line and have similar problems with me...! Unexpected Freezing with NO LOGS at all.!!

And now some of you will say and it is obvious that the hardware is wrong...something is wrong to the hardware...memories or cpu or io devices or GOD knows what..!! And I say that is something wrong with the software.Why not???
Can anyone say any different??? Yesterday night I have received a phone call from a collie of mine which switched to this virtual software on a cluster level and from now then he is always on phone with support.!

I do not want to say that is a bad solution ..on the contrary it is a very nice try but it is not for me .! I really want your opinion on this...Thank you.

Not everything has to suit/work out for everyone all the time. But that is not only restricted to software. Fortunately often there is not only one solution and therefore one has the choice.

I wish you all the best with whatever your next choice will be.

 

[_gabriel]

do you overcommit cpu ? Memory ?
Specs ? storage ?

 

[arxaios]

Dear UdoB ,

I agree with you BUT this software is advertised as to be a solution to even small and light hardware to have the change to bring to life old machines with the power of open source solutions. Am I right or wrong??? I talking about the free version and open version of it.
So I have watched people all over the world and on Youtube mostly trying to install this software on even less hardware resoursable machines even laptops and they claim to be OK.!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was surprised by it and I tried my own and I realized that is too young to be stable enough because a lot of testing solution are done to smallest hardware devices to see its potentials ...am I right or wrong?

So said that , I want to say that a machines witch hangs and nothing is logged when it is still operational (not shut down ) is a software problem and not a hardware problem and what I really want to say is that the Kernel of this solution is not well written to handle these errors . On other systems if there is something wrong with the hardware (disk , memory , io devices ) depending on the Kernel Interrupts something is logged to guide you to the problem....HERE we have nothing so the action is nothing...!!! Even If I had a power failure the system on the next reboot will show you the problem...on most operating systems that are well written...! Here and I say this again WE HAVE NOTHING.!

 

[arxaios]

do you overcommit cpu ? Memory ?
Specs ? storage ?

No I did not ...But even so , then it is VERY VERY bad for me not to shutdown this VM from hanging the entire server..Sorry but this is not a Virtualization at all..!!
This is the power of Virtualization and not the way around..!!!

 

[UdoB]

I agree with you BUT this software is advertised as to be a solution to even small and light hardware to have the change to bring to life old machines with the power of open source solutions. Am I right or wrong???

A lot of people (including me) have sufficient success using old or "small" hardware systems.

The official documentation (https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#_system_requirements ) starts with "We recommend using high quality server hardware, when running Proxmox VE in production." (And yes, a small system at home, serving actually used services for the living room is "in production".)

Back to your point regarding not sufficient error logging: yes, in my experience this is true for a lot of systems. All Linux systems log a vast amount of information - but a situation where you just do not find any helping message in /var/log/messages is unfortunately often the case.

PVE is "just" Debian Bullseye with a modified kernel from Ubuntu. When that base system can not log some specific error messages it is not Proxmox' responsibility. For example the disk/storage-subsystem must be working correctly to write to /var/log/messaging... after a problem rose...

Sorry, no better statement from me...

 

[arxaios]

Maybe you are right ...
I have to say that your statement is good but I have to tested myself to see if that is the case.! Thank you.

 

[arxaios]

I have to say one more thing....Between 2 freezes , I had only one reboot out of the blue ...now one more freeze and only occurs after Sunday..!! I do not have anything on Schedule ..!! as far as I can see OR it just random..!! I think it is doing this after a long time of IDLE ...!! Maybe ...!!
I raise my hands with this Debian Bullseye if it is that..!!