VMWare to ProxMox ADvice

Software & Web Applications
1

Hello,

Looking to brainstorm something. I am in the middle of migrating VMs to proxmox from ESXI. Production VMs in a small business for a client.

They have 4 nodes. Mostly Dell PowerEdge R750xs servers, under warranty. VM storage live on the servers.

As of right now I have two ESXI servers left. Remaining VMs are on “Server7” Server 8 is empty.

(Server 7 VMs are being backed up daily with Synology Active backup.)

image
image421×311 7.99 KB

Then we have two Servers running proxmox. I have been converting VMs and so far so good.

Here is where I am not sure if I am worrying too much or over thinking things.

As of right now my thought was to just to convert Server 8 to proxmox then migrate all those VMs to server 8 then turn server 7 into proxmox and move VMs around.

But then I started to get nervous about that idea, if server 7 has a hardware issue after server 8 is already on proxmox, I then have no where to restore VM backups to since Synology active backup need an ESXI box. And I am not sure at this point how easy it would be to get ESXI back on Server 8.

  1. Can you still use old ESXI installers?
  2. Can you use them without a license?

Also, I checked and I am pretty sure I can fit all these VMs on the 2 proxmox servers that are currently up and running, empty these ESXI servers then convert them to proxmox. But with that I was a little nervous maxing out those two servers with VMs in case those have any hard ware issues during the switch.

  1. Am I over thinking this? These servers have been very reliable.
  2. What would you do?

Thanks!

2

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to think through the whole migration process. Here’s how I’d tackle this situation: I’d set up a Proxmox cluster on three of the four nodes, get all of the VMs running on them, make sure I have a known good backup taken from Proxmox, and only then add the fourth server to the cluster.

3

How critical are these VMs? Can you afford downtime?

You might be able to set up a Clonezilla server and image these last few VMs to a Clonezilla style backup that you could use as a “universal backup”. Then if 7 failed during the migration process, you could at least restore them to the other 3 servers.

Or how much CPU/RAM/DISK are your VMs using? Would over provisioning them actually be a big deal, especially if it is only for a few hours and you can pick those hours? You could move them all to the 2 current Proxmox, convert 7 and 8 over to Proxmox, then load balance everything.

Alternate are there any VMs that can be shut down to free resources while you move these last few VMs? Again assuming you can pick the time and enough of it to complete the work before larger loads pickup.

4

I ended up cramming everything onto the 2 servers. Then switches the other two to proxmox quickly.

1 Like