what to do?

R

ressel

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Mar 7, 2010
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Hello Proxmox community.

My host server i got today, doesn't have a hardware raid controller.
I have been talking to the server center, and they can add a raid controller.
But when they add this raid controller, i will need to reinstall my server.

What data should I copy, and what is the best method?
Im using latest Proxmox PVE and both KVM and OpenVZ.
its a single server.

Best Regards
Søren Ressel
 
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I would suggest you do 2 methods for redundancy, so if something goes wrong you still have options.

Start your vzdumps now, and save those seperately to be restored afterwards.
The PVE developers released a new iso just this hour, so you can re-install a fresh copy of that, which might be nice.
Then restore your vzdumps to that.

-

Another way would be to use clonezilla to create an image of the current installation, that can be restored to the new virtual disk provided by the controller.
This can be saved to a network mount, perhaps your provider has interim storage available.

If not you could run a FTP server on your local machine temporarily to save to. Assuming you're internet connection is residential-grade, this could involve significant delays in uploading the image to restore from.
Check out the clonezilla website for possible suggestions on colocated backups. I would assume someone else has done that before & wrote about it, although I don't know from experience.
 
I think this is my solution.

I have a 500gb disc attached local on the server, this disc will not be touched.
I will copy the raw images from kvm's and do transfer vzdumps from OpenVZ to this disc.

Then tell server center to install hardware raid controller, and reinstall my server with newest proxmox, copy back the server images from the 500gb attached disc.

Do you see any problems in this method?
 
Yes, you'd be better off doing vzdumps of both KVMs and OpenVZ containers because the vzdump application ensures the proper handling of the configuration files in addition to the disk images.

It also allows you the option to choose the use of file compression that you might want to do if you're going to download a local copy for safety's sake.

See the 'How-To' page on the wiki for details on command line options for doing backups manually.
Restores are done from the command line either way.
The qmrestore is relatively easy to do for KVMs.

I haven't done OpenVZ backups myself, so I can't speak from experience on doing those, manually or otherwise.

You could schedule a backup from the web interface for a time a few minutes away from what the system clock says the time is on the web interface while you're creating the backup job, so that they happen automatically and you can be sure the commands are entered correctly.

Somewhere on the forums are instructions on specifically which files are needed to do backups without using the vzdump application, if you insist on doing it that way- but it would seem to complicate unnecessarily to do so, especially when the vzdump application is functioning and available.
 
Either way, if the selected mode isn't possible for some reason it'll fall back to the next available method.

If you try to use snapshot mode to backup VMs that live on NFS shares, they freeze when the job falls back to suspend mode.
This since the snapshot is of the abstracted logical volume, and NFS isn't LVM2.
 
ressel said:
is the snapshot mode good enough?
Or what mode should i use when i make the backup?
Click to expand...

The safer mode, for example if you have databases, is to stop the VM, and then backup it. But it can take some times, depending on your VMs size.

If I was you, I would test the restore process of at least one VM, the least important to begin (if you restore on the same host or cluster, you have to delete the current VM before restoring it).
You will be more confident if you did it previously, before installing your new controller and reformating your hard disks !

Alain
 
ressel said:
is the snapshot mode good enough?
Click to expand...

You want to transfer the VM to a new location, so you don't want any changes after you made the backup! The only reasonable way to do that is to stop the VM (and restart after copying to the new location).
 
My server has the raid controller now, and is being installing proxmox atm. when i tried drive redirection with my proxmox-ve_1.6-5261-4.iso from my laptop on a 2mbit upload connection in DK to my server in Germany, it failed in right after the page where it shows press F2 to verbose, after writing check cd, and last line, where it finds network, it just gave me a black screen, and nothing else happened.
I ended up using a old proxmox 1.5 image, when installation is done I will just upgrade my server.
 
ressel said:
I ended up using a old proxmox 1.5 image, when installation is done I will just upgrade my server.
Click to expand...

You used the latest available 1.6 installer image?

Ah, yes - you already answered that in your post (please ignore my question)
 
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Hello Again.
Just wanted to give latest news atm.
I have rolled back 2 of 3 vm's and working on the last one.
No problems after I used the proxmox 1.5 install media, and upgraded after installation.
 
Hello ressel,

I did not know that you were doing a remote upgrade/install. In such case, I much prefer to be near the server... Perhaps I would have done the upgrade to 1.6 before rolling back the VMs, because you will have to stop your machines and reboot...

But glad that it seems to work...

Alain
 
I would also prefer to be near the server, but it wasn't possible, im living in Denmark, and the server is located in Germany.

Here is how I did:
Shutdown server and KVM over IP.
Server Center Technicians installed hardware raid.
Powering on server and KVM over IP, boot cd-media with Drive Redirect over internet.
Install Proxmox 1.5.
Upgrade to 1.6.
Roll back vm's, and power them on.

Best Regards
Søren Ressel
 
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