Hi All,
Let me start off with this...
I am using ProxMox for years now, what a wonderful product!!!
It is amazing what it can do...
Version 2 is just stellar.
One of the ways I use it is to 'rescue' old winBlows XP stuff from old PCs that are burning out.
Got a not-for-profit organization with a situation where there is no backup from the old system...
Managed to dd_rescue the whole old harddisk (640GB) to an .img file
Created a vm on a new Dell PE T310 proxmox server with 640 GB of disk and overwrote the vm-100-disk-1.raw file with the dd image...
I did not do anything special while installing proxmox
latest version + apt-get upgrade / apt-get dist-upgrade
(I have the feeling I missed a step here - reduce size? - optimize img for virtualization?)
Things started up - WinBlows complained about hardware changes and had to re-register... etc
All small things - I got it to work ... but ...
First is there a way to reduce/optimize the current vm-100-disk-1.raw file, it is ~640GB and only 100GB is used inside the XP system?
I had to re-tune my ext4 based backup devices so I could backup this monster file... in +5 hours...
BTW - What is the size of the largest .raw file a stock ProxMox can handle?
Secondly - as we speak I (try to) backup the image to different (rotate) 3TB USB disks.
What would be the ideal formatting of these disks?
ext4 -T largefile -L backup /dev/sdcX is what it is now
(No LVM etc.)
How would I go with automatically mounting/unmounting these so users can rotate them without me being there ...?
(And still use the ProxMox scheduled backup task...)
One idea is to label all 3 disks "backup" and have a script in the background that uses:
/bin/mount /dev/disk/by-label/backup /media/backupDisk
/media/backupDisk is defined as backup storage inside ProxMox.
Problem is that it would fill up / on the main ProxMox disk if something goes wrong with the mount...
Filling that disk to 100% - making it read-only - and crashing the ProxMox system ... (Happened before)
(I will probably end up writing my own backup script - double checking a successful mount - unless somebody here has a better idea)
Can we have something in ProxMox that makes sure a USB disk is present before it starts dumping...?
Lastly - XP (the vm) produces a minidump ~ 20 times a week.
FYI There is a database app on it - it acts as a server - using MSSQL - but I don't think that is the problem.
The vm produces a BSOD - reboots and carries on - but it is annoying to the users as they have to restart their 'client' app on their newer Win7 PCs
Some investigation revealed that some driver in XP crashes... (err 0x5)
I am further cleaning up the XP system by removing unused drivers/software - but so far no luck.
Has anybody have some other tips for this ... ?
One of the ideas is to do an in-line WinXP update, which hopefully will overwrite/disable the failing driver
but I do not do that until I can properly/fast backup/restore the .raw file
so reducing the size on that one is priority #1.
To make things more challenging ...
I am time constrained as this organization is open 7 days a week.
So backup - fiddling with XP and if XP craps out, a restore of the backed-up vm needs to happen between 7pm and 7am...
I would like to sleep too...
Lots of questions...
Tips and hints are greatly appreciated!
Regards
Peter
Let me start off with this...
I am using ProxMox for years now, what a wonderful product!!!
It is amazing what it can do...
Version 2 is just stellar.
One of the ways I use it is to 'rescue' old winBlows XP stuff from old PCs that are burning out.
Got a not-for-profit organization with a situation where there is no backup from the old system...
Managed to dd_rescue the whole old harddisk (640GB) to an .img file
Created a vm on a new Dell PE T310 proxmox server with 640 GB of disk and overwrote the vm-100-disk-1.raw file with the dd image...
I did not do anything special while installing proxmox
latest version + apt-get upgrade / apt-get dist-upgrade
(I have the feeling I missed a step here - reduce size? - optimize img for virtualization?)
Things started up - WinBlows complained about hardware changes and had to re-register... etc
All small things - I got it to work ... but ...
First is there a way to reduce/optimize the current vm-100-disk-1.raw file, it is ~640GB and only 100GB is used inside the XP system?
I had to re-tune my ext4 based backup devices so I could backup this monster file... in +5 hours...
BTW - What is the size of the largest .raw file a stock ProxMox can handle?
Secondly - as we speak I (try to) backup the image to different (rotate) 3TB USB disks.
What would be the ideal formatting of these disks?
ext4 -T largefile -L backup /dev/sdcX is what it is now
(No LVM etc.)
How would I go with automatically mounting/unmounting these so users can rotate them without me being there ...?
(And still use the ProxMox scheduled backup task...)
One idea is to label all 3 disks "backup" and have a script in the background that uses:
/bin/mount /dev/disk/by-label/backup /media/backupDisk
/media/backupDisk is defined as backup storage inside ProxMox.
Problem is that it would fill up / on the main ProxMox disk if something goes wrong with the mount...
Filling that disk to 100% - making it read-only - and crashing the ProxMox system ... (Happened before)
(I will probably end up writing my own backup script - double checking a successful mount - unless somebody here has a better idea)
Can we have something in ProxMox that makes sure a USB disk is present before it starts dumping...?
Lastly - XP (the vm) produces a minidump ~ 20 times a week.
FYI There is a database app on it - it acts as a server - using MSSQL - but I don't think that is the problem.
The vm produces a BSOD - reboots and carries on - but it is annoying to the users as they have to restart their 'client' app on their newer Win7 PCs
Some investigation revealed that some driver in XP crashes... (err 0x5)
I am further cleaning up the XP system by removing unused drivers/software - but so far no luck.
Has anybody have some other tips for this ... ?
One of the ideas is to do an in-line WinXP update, which hopefully will overwrite/disable the failing driver
but I do not do that until I can properly/fast backup/restore the .raw file
so reducing the size on that one is priority #1.
To make things more challenging ...
I am time constrained as this organization is open 7 days a week.
So backup - fiddling with XP and if XP craps out, a restore of the backed-up vm needs to happen between 7pm and 7am...
I would like to sleep too...
Lots of questions...
Tips and hints are greatly appreciated!
Regards
Peter