PVE mount storage for backup

[nico2f]

Hi everyone,

I've been using PVE for a while now, and I'm very happy with it. However, I'm now looking to take advantage of its backup features.

I'm reaching out for assistance because I've currently mounted my QNAP server through iSCSI. However, I'm starting to think that I should instead mount the drives directly, but I'm struggling to find how to do this.

I've attempted to mount it as LVM, which correctly identifies the iSCSI storage. Unfortunately, I encounter a failure while attempting to save.

I'm receiving this error message:

create storage failed: command '/sbin/pvs --separator : --noheadings --units k --unbuffered --nosuffix --options pv_name,pv_size,vg_name,pv_uuid /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-36e843b68af28dfed94e9d4cf9da0aed3' failed: exit code 5 (500)

Could you please help me?

Thanks in advance.

 

[bbgeek17]

Did you connect your storage via multiple paths by chance? If you did, you should use multipath before LVM.

You can run "pvs" directly and see if it reports any errors.

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Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox

 

[nico2f]

Did you connect your storage via multiple paths by chance? If you did, you should use multipath before LVM.

You can run "pvs" directly and see if it reports any errors.

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Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox

Thanks, it was due to a multipath misconfiguration.

Now that I've successfully mounted the LVM, I'm encountering difficulty setting it as a backup target. Any clues?

 

[bbgeek17]

Now that I've successfully mounted the LVM, I'm encountering difficulty setting it as a backup target. Any clues?

No clues, but some suggestions: start by describing your current setup accompanied by a command line output that properly illustrates it, follow by explaining encountered difficulty in technical details, and finish up by listing the steps you have already tried and the results of those steps.

Good luck

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Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox

 

[nico2f]

After considerable troubleshooting, I managed to understand and resolve a few issues:

1. I discovered that it's not possible to store backups directly on LVM storages.
2. To work around this, I followed these steps:
   • First, I created a logical volume (LV) using the following commands:
     # pvdisplay (to see the physical volumes)
   • # lvcreate -L 14T -n lvqnap vgqnap
   • Then, I formatted the LV with the ext4 filesystem:
     # mkfs.ext4 /dev/vgqnap/lvqnap
   • Next, I mounted the LV:
     # mount /dev/vgqnap/lvqnap /mnt/vgqnap250
   • Finally, I verified that everything was set up correctly using:
     # lsblk
3. With the LV mounted, I was able to add the storage as a directory in the PVE GUI and set it to VZDump for backups.
4. To clean up, I deleted the previously added iSCSI storage and LVM storage in PVE, as they were no longer needed.

I post this in case it helps anyone in the future.
Thanks for your help!

 

[bbgeek17]

I deleted the previously added iSCSI storage and LVM storage in PVE, as they were no longer needed.

In this case you need to make sure that you put in place a procedure to connect/activate iSCSI storage outside of PVE. Otherwise, when you reboot the storage will not be present.

Good luck

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Blockbridge : Ultra low latency all-NVME shared storage for Proxmox - https://www.blockbridge.com/proxmox