Reinstalling proxmox and VMs onto new SSD without losing data on old hard drives

[Bsong98]

My current barebones set up is as follows:
- 1x SSD with proxmox OS installed
- 8x HDD RAIDZ2 with many VMs installed on the virtual disks created by proxmox

My hope for the new set up is as follows:
- 1x new SSD with proxmox OS installed
- 1x new SSD with many VM OS (Ubuntu server) installed
- 8x HDD RAIDZ2 with VM data

Is there some way to achieve this without copying the data off and rebuilding the vm disks? Ideally I would like to start with a fresh VM install on the new SSD, then import the data from my old zpool without needing to copy everything off to a backup. Or maybe there’s a better way to do it. Thanks!

 

[Dunuin]

You need to backup your /etc/pve folder. Easiest would be to backup the config.db and restore it on the new PVE installation. See here: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Proxmox_Cluster_File_System_(pmxcfs)#_recovery

Keep in mind that your HDDs only store the virtual disks. Your guests still need the config files stored in /etc/pve/lxc, /etc/pve/qemu-server, /etc/pve/firewall, ...

 

[Bsong98]

Thanks for the reply, will give this a shot and see if I can get things going. Appreciate your help!

 

[adresner]

How come proxmox backup doesn’t have an option to backup the config file as well?

 

[Neobin]

How come proxmox backup doesn’t have an option to backup the config file as well?

Of course, a regular backup of a guest includes the configuration, but the OP stated:

Ideally I would like to start with a fresh VM install on the new SSD, then import the data from my old zpool without needing to copy everything off to a backup.