Proxmox Migration - Progress Report #3

The dead speak!

OK, it's not quite that cartoonish.  Jerome is up and running Proxmox.  It is in the cluster with joanna.  Migrating running VMs between the hosts is a piece of cake.

Networking appears to be doing networking properly, so that's good.

I've created new PFSense and TrueNAS VMs on jerome and am currently migrating the data from the TrueNAS VM I created on joanna over to the one on jerome.  I chose to rsync the data over rather than try to move the running VM because the way I have the storage set up on jerome is different - I have one big ZFS drive on the host, and mutiple virtual disks shared up to the TrueNAS VM on jerome, whereas I just did one big ZFS on jaonna and gave the whole thing to TrueNAS -- in retrospect, that appears to have been an error.  The way I'm doing it on jerome allows me more control over the shares and the ability to regulate provisioning of storage add storage if needed, which was not really available the way I did it on joanna.

...well, that was yesterday.  As of today, jerome is completely stood-up, and all my "expected to be up all the time" VMs are there.  Storage has been built out and migrated.  The PFsense VM is doing its thing.  My DNSMasq host - an olde Raspberry Pi 2 - has been repointed (hopefully for the last time) to the PFSense firewall on jerome.

Storage share clients have all been pointed to the new trueNAS VM on jerome.

The only things that didn't go as I'd initially planned were:  

1. I was unable to use a larger NVMe SSD on jerome because old motherboard
2. SO's MS Windows VM had to be recreated with the storage from the original VM mounted as a bag on the side.

All things considered, I'm very happy with the way the migration to Proxmox has gone.  

Joanna now houses lab/testing VMs, and will be off unless access to those VMs is needed.  Jerome is the primary VM host again, and the manageability and robustness has never been better.

Next, I'll have to work out how backups are going to be done.  That shouldn't be too bad, tho.

So, this is me, calling the Proxmox migration a success, and signing off for now.

Proxmox Migration - Progress Report #2

Joanna - the new Proxmox host - is up and running, and all but two VMs have been migrated, and demonstrated to work properly.  I've created a new PFsense VM on joanna, and configured and tested it.  This will operate in place of the one still running on Jerome - the old VM host based on VirtualBox.  The "old" PFsense VM will not be preseved.  A new one will be created once jerome has been setup to run Proxmox.

The other VM still running on Jerome is my SO's desktop VM (running - shudder - MS Windows).  The one dificulty I expect may happen when migrating is the whole "you've replaced too much hardware" alarm going off and having to re-register MS Windows 10.  On the plus side, it's retail Win 10 Pro.  As such, my understanding is that you can re-home the license, unlike OEM versions.  The possible downside is Win10 is approaching EOL (October of next year) and MS would really rather you use Win11 because telemetry.  We'll see.  I'm confident in my process for migrating VMs from VirtualBox to Proxmox.  I'm less confident in Microsoft.

Floyd - the old storage host - is still plugging along.  All shares have been moved off the storage on jerome, and all clients are re-pointed to floyd.  That's good.

I'm planning to migrate routing from the PFsense VM on jerome to the one on joanna today, and shutting down the one on jerome.  This coming Saturday, I'm planning to migrate the last VM - the Win10 one - off jerome, and lights-out the box for the last time as an Ubuntu-based VM host running VirtualBox.  Then, hopefully, I can take my time getting jerome stood up as a properly-configured Proxmox host.

Proxmox Migration - Progress Report #1

I have procured parts to build a "modern" Proxmox host, including an ATX MoBo, 12C/24T AMD Ryzen 7900X, 128GB RAM, a 2TB SSD, and 4 x 1GB NIC.  I've pre-built the new host (Joanna, named after Roz mother from Frasier ...and, yes, I've set up that many machines that I'm going that deep into the bench of Frasier characters) on a "test bench" frame I bought.

The parts... minus the NIC and SSD.  Also ended up
using the cooler that came with the CPU.

I have done some storage experiments, and arrived at the conclusion that using the existing 18TB disks in a XFS RAID5 will be the way to go.  That means I will need to wipe the disks and re-format them when I do the OS Reinstall on Jerome.  For continuity of service, that means I need to port those files off to somewhere else.  I have decided to light up Floyd, my old 20-bay storage server, which has been cold iron for a little over a year (that's when I migrated storage to the disks onboard Jerome).  Floyd is up and operating as expected.  I have migrated my video library back over there, and now I have to migrate my other file shares over there.  Then I need to repoint all my share mounts.  That'll be fun.  This is in preparation for the OS install on Jerome.

Of course, I'll also need to migrate all the VMs currently running on Jerome off to Joanna.  In previous migration attempts, I have not forced the MAC address of the copy to match the MAC of the original.  For these remaining VMs, I really want to make sure the copies on Joanna look just like the originals did on Jerome.  Hopefully I can coordinate everything and set the MACs, and they just come up.

I've done some networking experiments with the new NIC, and managed to get 2 of the 4 interfaces set up, which is the minimum I need to set-up my replacement PFsense VM.  I plan on the other two being "room for expansion".  I've decided to go with a replacement rather than a migration, as I want to be able to "flip the switch" on my other machines -- from VirtualBox-based VM to Proxmox-based VM -- without any down time.  Once Jerome is back up running Proxmox, I'll just set up another PFsense VM there.  ...but I'll be able to take my time and make sure all the network interfaces are set up and working as I expect.

I had hoped that I could setup a "storage" VM on Joanna, and mount the shares from Floyd there, and re-share them via NFS, which, I'd hoped, would eliminate the need to re-write all the /etc/fstab files on all the machines on the network that use the shares twice.  It looks like that's not going to work.  However, I did figure out how I'm going to do the big disk array once Jerome is running Proxmox, and I will be using a storage VM to share those filesystems... I may even try out TrueNAS.  Who knows.  At a minimum, I can just use Debian, as my needs are pretty contained.

Ultimately, my plan is for Jerome to be the "prime" VM host, where all my "full time" VMs (storage, firewall, desktop, streaming servers) will run, and Joanna will be my "secondary" VM host, where "lab machines" and other non-full time VMs will live.  Each VM host will have its own local storage, but the "Big Store" will live on Jerome for the foreseeable future.  Floyd (named, incidentally, for Mayberry's favorite barber -- I used to name my machines after Andy Griffith Show characters) will go back to cold iron once the migration on Jerome is complete.

Today, I plan to move the guts of Joanna into the case I'd originally bought for Zora.  Then, I'll migrate some (all?) the non-PFsense VMs to Joanna.  Maybe I can also set up a PFsense VM on Joanna.  We'll see.  It looks like it'll be a full, rich day.