RAID on PVE

[Indirectelex]

Hello there,
So I wonder what happens if I installed a RAID on PVE 7.2 and I decide to install PVE 7.2.2 (for example)? In short i want to know if the RAID is still recognized if I install proxmox on proxmox?

 

[sterzy]

HI,

im really uncertain what exactly you want to accomplish. How do you intend to setup the RAID (e.g.: with ZFS/BTRFS or some other solution)? And why do you want to install Proxmox VE on top of Proxmox VE? What do you want to accomplish by doing that?

 

[Indirectelex]

HI,

im really uncertain what exactly you want to accomplish. How do you intend to setup the RAID (e.g.: with ZFS/BTRFS or some other solution)? And why do you want to install Proxmox VE on top of Proxmox VE? What do you want to accomplish by doing that?

I experienced regular issue concerning the pve update and upgrade so the only way for me to update is to reinstall pve with the newest version available. So I would like to know if the RAID will still there after a manual update?

 

[sterzy]

I experienced regular issue concerning the pve update and upgrade so the only way for me to update is to reinstall pve with the newest version available.

What kind of issues do you encounter when updating and upgrading? This shouldn't generally cause issues.

So I would like to know if the RAID will still there after a manual update?

That would depend on how you set up your RAID and what you use as a boot drive.

 

[Dunuin]

You could also backup your system disk with tools like clonezilla before doing upgrades. That way you could atleast restore PVE from backup and don't need to set it all up again from scratch.

 

[Indirectelex]

What kind of issues do you encounter when updating and upgrading? This shouldn't generally cause issues.


That would depend on how you set up your RAID and what you use as a boot drive.

My boot drive is a samsung 500Gb SSD

 

[sterzy]

Ok sorry that was somewhat misleadingly phrased, I meant do you use your RAID array only for storage or do you also use it as a boot drive?

 

[Indirectelex]

Ok sorry that was somewhat misleadingly phrased, I meant do you use your RAID array only for storage or do you also use it as a boot drive?

Only for storage. My boot drive is a 500gb SSD. If I use clonezilla to backup proxmox OS on an USB stick should I use a USB stick with a minimum of 500GB?

 

[Dunuin]

Only for storage. My boot drive is a 500gb SSD. If I use clonezilla to backup proxmox OS on an USB stick should I use a USB stick with a minimum of 500GB?

Jep, but USB HDD would be cheaper

 

[Indirectelex]

Jep, but USB HDD would be cheaper

Thanks, I am glad you talked about USB HDD otherwise, the prices of USB sticks was stopping me. Then I wonder if I can install Proxmox Backup Server on the local-lvm storage and restore PBS with Clonezilla?

 

[Dunuin]

In case you got your PBS as a VM or LXC you could also use Vzdump to backup/restore PBS.

 

[Indirectelex]

In case you got your PBS as a VM or LXC you could also use Vzdump to backup/restore PBS.

Ok imagine I have a 4TB External HDD, is it possible to use it with clonezilla to backup proxmox OS and also use Vzdump to backup/restore PBS on that same drive?

 

[Dunuin]

Sure. Clonezilla just stores backups of block storages as image files. And Vzdump will also store VM/LXC backups as archive or image files. So a single partition, like 4TB ext4, should be able to store both.

 

[Indirectelex]

Sure. Clonezilla just stores backups of block storages as image files. And Vzdump will also store VM/LXC backups as archive or image files. So a single partition, like 4TB ext4, should be able to store both.

Thank you for the precision. So Ill get an external disk instead of PBS.

Also I wonder what happen if one drive of a proxmox RAID failed. can I simply change it or I need to do something else?

 

[Dunuin]

Thank you for the precision. So Ill get an external disk instead of PBS.

I still would use PBS. Vzdump is soooo inefficient as it doesn't support incremental or differential backups. Lets say you got a 1TB VM that changes 10GB per day and you want 7 daily + 8 weekly backups. Vzdump will store 15x 1TB = 15TB. PBS will store 1x 1TB + 6x 10GB + 8x 70GB = 1.62TB. Not only that it will save alot of space, it will also backup faster, as the full 1TB only need to be written once and the following 10GB backups will be way faster.

Also I wonder what happen if one drive of a proxmox RAID failed. can I simply change it or I need to do something else?

That depends. If you use ZFS and boot from it, you would also need to partition it first, write the bootloader and so on like described here at "Changing a failed bootable device": https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/ZFS_on_Linux#_zfs_administration

 

[Indirectelex]

I still would use PBS. Vzdump is soooo inefficient as it doesn't support incremental or differential backups. Lets say you got a 1TB VM that changes 10GB per day and you want 7 daily + 8 weekly backups. Vzdump will store 15x 1TB = 15TB. PBS will store 1x 1TB + 6x 10GB + 8x 70GB = 1.62TB. Not only that it will save alot of space, it will also backup faster, as the full 1TB only need to be written once and the following 10GB backups will be way faster.

Ok, so I have a RAID5 on proxmox with 4x 2TB 2.5" HDD disks (I have a poweredge) and a RAID10 with 4x 1TB SSD. I use the RAID10 for my VMs exclusively. Then I wonder if I can use space from my RAID5 on PBS and also on other VMs. I need to know if a VM died then can I restore it with its attached hard disk storage from PBS?

 

[Dunuin]

PBS datastore on the raid5 should be fine (except for the bad IOPS performance of HDDs and raid5) when you don't store any guests data (except for the PBS VM which might be useful to be stored on that raid5 too, so you don't loose it when your raid10 dies) on that raid5. But you should also backup your "/etc/pve" folder to that raid5. In case your raid10 dies you then could install a fresh PVE to the raid10, restore your PVE configs (like "/etc/pve/storage.cfg", "/etc/pve/qemu-server/VmidOfYourPbsVm.conf" and so on) from that raid5 and restore the guests from the PBS VM.

 

[Indirectelex]

PBS datastore on the raid5 should be fine (except for the bad IOPS performance of HDDs and raid5) when you don't store any guests data (except for the PBS VM which might be useful to be stored on that raid5 too, so you don't loose it when your raid10 dies) on that raid5. But you should also backup your "/etc/pve" folder to that raid5. In case your raid10 dies you then could install a fresh PVE to the raid10, restore your PVE configs (like "/etc/pve/storage.cfg", "/etc/pve/qemu-server/VmidOfYourPbsVm.conf" and so on) from that raid5 and restore the guests from the PBS VM.

Very interesting to install PBS on a distinct RAID. Sorry, I said I have 2 RAID, but my proxmox OS is installed on another drive (there is 9 drives into this scenario, 4 drives for each RAID and one drive with 500gb for pve). I just bought an external HDD to backup pve OS itself and PBS OS. At that point I dont know if its better to install PBS on local-lvm which is on the pve drive exclusively or to install PBS on the RAID5. Anyways thanks again this is very enlightening.

 

[Dunuin]

You can also install PBS bare-metal side by side with PVE. Just install a PVE from ISO and add the PBS with apt update && apt install proxmox-backup-server later. Then you got PVE + PBS bare metal (one webUI on port 8006, one on port 8007) and both can share the same raid arrays. That way when backing up PVE with clonezilla you also backup PBS.

 

[Indirectelex]

You can also install PBS bare-metal side by side with PVE. Just install a PVE from ISO and add the PBS with apt update && apt install proxmox-backup-server later. Then you got PVE + PBS bare metal (one webUI on port 8006, one on port 8007) and both can share the same raid arrays. That way when backing up PVE with clonezilla you also backup PBS.

If I paste that command I got Unable to locate package proxmox-backup-server, so I tried : curl -O https://www.proxmox.com/en/download...load&args[0]=36a219c939e5b04a2867f04dd438685c but it just dont work
Should I install PBS on a ct or I need to download PBS in a specific way?