Would this be crazy, or would it just work?

[akulbe]

I'm planning on switching from a dual-CPU Xeon system to dual-CPU AMD EPYC system. But it's coming from overseas and won't be here for probably a month…

Would it be crazy to install on the Intel-based system now, and swap it out for the AMD when it gets here? The only hardware changes will be the motherboard and CPUs. RAM, NICs, storage will all be the same.

Flame on.

 

[chchia]

perhaps the PCI ID will also change.

my suggestion is you can:

1. install the proxmox on Xeon, build up all your VM.

2. install PBS on another PC, backup all you VM in PBS before your ready to switch, you can install PBS in another PC running another VM like Hyper-V or virtualbox.

3. when your new EPYC arrived, install the proxmox, link to the PBS.

4. restore all your backed up VM from PBS to your EPYC.

 

[leesteken]

Linux, and therefore Proxmox, usually handles hardware changes pretty well. Your network device name will be different (unless you give it a name yourself) and you'll have to fix that on the Proxmox host console (lots of threads about that on this forum). Just don't break the virtualization abstraction by giving your VMs a virtual CPU that depends on your actual CPU and don't use PCIe passthrough, etc.

EDIT: This is how I install a new Proxmox: install and setup inside a virtual machine, configure it, and then move it to a physical machine (and fix the network).

 

[akulbe]

I got PVE 8.1.4 installed on my Intel system. I bought licensing for 3 more CPUs for PVE and and a license for PBS.

I (now I think, foolishly) named my first node just "proxmox". I want to rename it to "pve2", but from looking at the wiki, I understand that renaming a node is best done on an empty node, and that it shouldn't be part of a cluster yet.



to recap:

Intel system named "pve1", still empty.
AMD system named "proxmox", want to rename to "pve2", but has all the VMs on it currently.
There is a third system coming, but I'm not sure when it'll ship. Eventually, the goal is a proper cluster. It'll be "pve3", of course.

I have a license for PBS, but haven't set it up anywhere yet. Not sure where is best to do that, for my setup. No Ceph in the picture at all. All shared storage is NFS from ~34TB of Synology across two units.

I want to avoid shooting myself in the foot, as much as I can. So any advice you folks might have for how best to accomplish this is appreciated!

 

[leesteken]

You cannot, and don't need to, buy licenses for Proxmox VE/BS; the license is always AGPLv3. I think you mean support subscriptions?
Renaming is often the cause for people asking for help on this forum. Maybe just reinstall and restore VMs from backup? Also, don't cluster nodes that already have VMs.