Restore v1.9 vm to v3.0

[cutty]

I have a Proxmox host V1.9 with 5 x KVM's and 2 x OpenVz VM's.
I want to upgrade the host to V3.0 and was going to do the following:-
- Backup each VM using vzdump (tgz)
- Clean ISO install V3.0
- Restore each vm

With such a large jump between Proxmox versions, is there any problem with this method?

 

[tom]

looks good. the virtual hardware for KVM guests will change, but this is not that big problem. if you run windows, you will see new hardware and if your windows license requires activation, you will need to activate again.

 

[mmenaz]

About this... I've moved just for test a Windows 2003-32 from 2.3 to 3.0 pvtest (kvm 1.4.2), and the guest sees a "unknown PCI device", I've no idea about what it is, nor what drivers can be used, so I just disabled. Is it ok? Also virtio nic changed and had to provide virtio-win-0.1-49 (I've read about big troubles with newer ones).
I ask:
- what about that unkown pci device?
- what about proxmox team provide "suggested" windows virtio drivers, so is no more a "guess work" and "I cross my fingers" game? I mean a .iso with subdir with clear OS names (no Wlh, Wnet, etc) and the "more stable and fitting driver" for current proxmox kvm? That would be of great help
Thanks a lot

 

[dea]

About this... I've moved just for test a Windows 2003-32 from 2.3 to 3.0 pvtest (kvm 1.4.2), and the guest sees a "unknown PCI device", I've no idea about what it is, nor what drivers can be used, so I just disabled. Is it ok? Also virtio nic changed and had to provide virtio-win-0.1-49 (I've read about big troubles with newer ones).
I ask:
- what about that unkown pci device?
- what about proxmox team provide "suggested" windows virtio drivers, so is no more a "guess work" and "I cross my fingers" game? I mean a .iso with subdir with clear OS names (no Wlh, Wnet, etc) and the "more stable and fitting driver" for current proxmox kvm? That would be of great help
Thanks a lot

OK, on 2003 the best choice is virtio-win-0.1-49, don't use newer drivers (BSOD).
There is a my previous post on 2003 and 2008r1 (VISTA kernel).

Luca

 

[hotwired007]

- what about that unkown pci device?

i think its to do with memory ballooning.

 

[dea]

hmmm I doubt.
"I've moved just for test a Windows 2003-32 from 2.3 to 3.0 pvtest", Proxmox 2.3 just support memory ballooning....

 

[tom]

unknown device is the virtio balloon device.

for details, see http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Dynamic_Memory_Management

if you want to disable it for your VM, just add the following line to your VMID.conf file:

balloon: 0

for winxp and win2003, use the virtio-win-0.1-49.iso, newer versions has issues. but generally speaking, these OS are a bit old and MS recommends to upgrade.

 

[mmenaz]

Thanks tom, I'll test the balloon.
About guest upgrade, no, one of the advantages of virtualization is that decouples you to physical hardware!
i.e. I've a legacy app that runs only on windows 2000 and I can still run it inside proxmox/kvm.
Or you have a couple of old servers with an old OS and legacy app, and you virtualize it on a brand new proxmox server AND you are also able to provide newer OS for gradual migration / for the new programs
I think that kvm should retain backward compatibility, since is much easier for it than for real hardware. As far as I know, kvm has some flags to specify older hardware for the vm.
And finally, really my idea of proxmox providing a .iso with suggested drivers for guest is something you should consider. Let's face it, you can't avoid M$evil OSs, and if the guest OS has troubles/bad performances inside KVM while has better in HyperView / VMWare, the blame goes (wrongly) to proxmox, so for kvm in general and proxmox in particular, is very important that "user experience" (= proxmox sys admin) are able to make M$ guest work smootly (and shutdown cleanly... looknig forward for that guest implementation, like vmware I've been told has).
Thanks a lot
(btw, I've tried storage migration, wow!)

 

[tom]

emulated hardware changes betweem 1.9 and 2.x (3.x). you have changes here. but no problem in newer versions, e.g. from 2.x to 3.0.