[SOLVED] Start VMs after backups ends

[Carlos34]

Hi everyone,

I have a home lab that I shut down each night. The server is set to boot at 8:00 AM.

I have a backup job scheduled to run at the same time, and it's working as expected. However, I've noticed that all my virtual machines (VMs) start simultaneously. I believe it would be more efficient if they waited for the backup to complete before booting.

As a workaround, I've configured the pfSense VM with a start order of 1 and a 20-minute wait. This allows the backup to finish before the other VMs begin booting.

Is there a way to make all my VMs wait for the backup job to finish before starting the boot process?

Thank you for your help!

 

[Neobin]

Afaik, there is no explicit option/mechanism for this, but you could use:
https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-sysadmin.html#first_guest_boot_delay

 

[Carlos34]

Thanks!
It can be a good workaround.

 

[Carlos34]

Not working

Max node start delay is 300 secs and backups requires 40 minutes.

I have tried to do this:

- Server auto switch-on at 9:00
- Node start delay 300
- I have configured a VM with Start order 1 and Startup Delay 2400
- Backup is scheduled at 9:10

The idea was to start a VM and give time to Backup to finish, but the backup doesn't start until after "Startup Delay" of 2400. In that momento (9:45), the VMs and Backup start at same time.

I'm going to put the backup job in the cron manually and tomorrow will tell you what happened.

 

[Carlos34]

I can confirm that Backup jobs start after Bulk start VMs, so, the Node Start Delay and VMs Startup Delay are useless.
I have to create manually a cron job

Now, Server starts at 9:00 and the cron job starts at 9:03.
The backup (vzdump) always starts by the VM with the smaller number, it doesn't matter the order you put them in the command line.

- Server auto switch-on at 9:00
- Cron job starts at 09:03
- Node start delay 300. In that time, the 1st VM has been backed up.
- 1st VM to start has to be the one with smallest ID number, because that was the 1st being backed up. I set a Startup Delay 1680. It's the time required to backup all the VMs

Regards
Carlos