Single Node Backup and Monitoring Suggestions

[Alvks]

Hi guys, now that I'm comfortable with my VM setup, I want to explore monitoring solutions that will alert me via email/text on critical events such as a hard disk failing SMART tests, unexpected reboots/shutdowns on any VM or the Proxmox node itself, etc. Also, I want to buy an 8TB external and run scheduled backups to it of my entire Proxmox server and it's VMs. What is the best way for that?

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600
RAM: 16GB DDR4 2400MHz
Proxmox VE 5.4 installed on 240GB SSD
Storage
1x4TB HGST HDD
1x2TB Western Digital External HDD
VMs
Plex Server/UniFi Controller - Windows 10
Discord API Development - Windows 10
PiHole - Ubuntu
Ansible Node - Ubuntu

 

[sb-jw]

I want to explore monitoring solutions that will alert me via email/text on critical events such as a hard disk failing SMART tests

How do you want to reach this, if you basic HW settings are not able to give you the ability of this?
If you only have a single node, you need to re-plan your hardware. You should have an raid 1 for every storage you use. PVE will alert you, if a disk has any bad SMART values.
If you want to monitor your KVM Processes, you need to create an own script for example with the API functions. But only to monitor the QEMU processes doesn't help you to check if the VM itself is reachable or not, you should check some ports, services and return values to make sure all is up and running.

 

[Alvks]

How do you want to reach this, if you basic HW settings are not able to give you the ability of this?
If you only have a single node, you need to re-plan your hardware. You should have an raid 1 for every storage you use. PVE will alert you, if a disk has any bad SMART values.
If you want to monitor your KVM Processes, you need to create an own script for example with the API functions. But only to monitor the QEMU processes doesn't help you to check if the VM itself is reachable or not, you should check some ports, services and return values to make sure all is up and running.

So there is no way to at least backup my 4 VMs on this node to an external drive? I know my hardware is more consumer oriented but I find it hard to believe that I am out of luck there.

 

[guletz]

Hi guys, now that I'm comfortable with my VM setup, I want to explore monitoring solutions that will alert me via email/text on critical events such as a hard disk failing SMART tests, unexpected reboots/shutdowns on any VM or the Proxmox node itself, etc.

One posibility is to use monit!

 

[Alvks]

One posibility is to use monit!

So I have heard about Monit. Would this get installed on the Proxmox node itself or can I run it under an Ubuntu VM?

 

[sb-jw]

So there is no way to at least backup my 4 VMs on this node to an external drive?

Sure you can, but it doesn't help you if a disk dies, for that you need an raid 1 in your node. Otherwise you have to replace the failed disk and you have to restore the VMs, but you will loose the data between the failure and the backup. So a second disk isn't expensive.

Would this get installed on the Proxmox node itself or can I run it under an Ubuntu VM?

Please do not install additional software or services on a Hypervisor, that's not designed for this. You should run it in a container or a VM.
But it's the same, if you non redundant OS disk fail, you will not get any notifications. The node dies first and all VMs are offline and unreachable. If you have luck you can get the one or other message, it's depend on the HW failure.