Several questions about upgrading and migrating data

[zvangi]

Hello everyone!

Straight to the point. I currently use ax61 over Hetzner with 2 NVMe drives running at raid0 because I needed the storage. I want to upgrade to ax101 and thinking about the best possible way to do it.

Should I use raid1 on my ax101 with 2 NVMe drives for vms and additional ssd for proxmox installation (possibly raid1 too) or create a zfs with 3 NVMe drives. It comes together closer to eachother in budget.

Also I have my vm backups on my servers additional 8TB harddrive, Is it easy to migrate them to new server after upgrade or is there any tricky parts that I don't know about.

Last thing, I have some configuration tweaks on my current proxmox installation such as network devices and disabled services because of hetzners portmapper error. Is it possible to clone my installation over or should I configure everything from scratch with clean installation?

Thank you!

EDIT: Hetzner replied that they can't move my existing HDD so I need a way to migrate my backups to my new server too. Possibly using a middleman VM from their cloud service.

 

[zvangi]

I understood from my researches that zfs cache is faster but overall speeds of ext4 raid1 is better when it comes to random I/O. I decided to go with two NVMe on raid1.

I also installed proxmox backup server on a virtual machine outside of my current dedicated server.

Do i need to know anything in addition to this? What is the best way to keep my configurations on my new installation too?

 

[Dunuin]

Straight to the point. I currently use ax61 over Hetzner with 2 NVMe drives running at raid0 because I needed the storage. I want to upgrade to ax101 and thinking about the best possible way to do it.

I would never run a raid0 on a server. If you need all the capacity I would use the disks without raid.

Should I use raid1 on my ax101 with 2 NVMe drives for vms and additional ssd for proxmox installation (possibly raid1 too) or create a zfs with 3 NVMe drives. It comes together closer to eachother in budget.

Raidz1 isn't recommended if you want to use it to store VMs on it because of the bad IOPS. You also would need to increase the vollbocksize to atleast 16K which is for example problematic if you want to run a posgres db. Best would be to have a pair of small drives (32GB will be fine) as a mirror for your OS and a pair of SSDs as a mirror for your VM storage.

Also I have my vm backups on my servers additional 8TB harddrive, Is it easy to migrate them to new server after upgrade or is there any tricky parts that I don't know about.

If you used Vzdump backups you just need to copy the files over to your new server.

Last thing, I have some configuration tweaks on my current proxmox installation such as network devices and disabled services because of hetzners portmapper error. Is it possible to clone my installation over or should I configure everything from scratch with clean installation?

There is no such feature build in. But you should backup the complete "/etc" folder (and especially the "/etc/pve" folder) so you take a look in your old config files to edit the new ones.

I understood from my researches that zfs cache is faster but overall speeds of ext4 raid1 is better when it comes to random I/O. I decided to go with two NVMe on raid1.

ZFS isn't just raid. If you just want a fast raid you should use something else like a HW raid with BBU and RAM cache. You should only use ZFS if you want it because of all it features.

 

[zvangi]

I would never run a raid0 on a server. If you need all the capacity I would use the disks without raid.

Raidz1 isn't recommended if you want to use it to store VMs on it because of the bad IOPS. You also would need to increase the vollbocksize to atleast 16K which is for example problematic if you want to run a posgres db. Best would be to have a pair of small drives (32GB will be fine) as a mirror for your OS and a pair of SSDs as a mirror for your VM storage.

If you used Vzdump backups you just need to copy the files over to your new server.

There is no such feature build in. But you should backup the complete "/etc" folder (and especially the "/etc/pve" folder) so you take a look in your old config files to edit the new ones.

ZFS isn't just raid. If you just want a fast raid you should use something else like a HW raid with BBU and RAM cache. You should only use ZFS if you want it because of all it features.

Thank you for clarification!