Migrating a VM from proxmox to TNS Scale EE

[David_Gonzalez]

Basically like the topic states, I already have the storage setup for some of my VMS on a nvme pool which I currently use for proxmox but my proxmox server is a 2012 ASUS laptop which still has some life but as my VM number increases and while I get some other machine to assemble my PVE server, I’d like to move some of the machine to my freenas server.

I’m guessing it is not going to be as painful because VM disks are already ZVOLs under TNS, but I do not know if the disk format is raw as I have it set on proxmox.

So what would be an advisable way if at all possible to migrate these vms to truenas?.

Thank you for any suggestions.

[Stux]

Converting proxmox vm to truenas scale vm

I have a Windows VM in Proxmox (in qcow2) and want to move it to my TrueNas Scale system. Is there a process or a step-by-step process where I can export the VM in Proxmox and Import it to TrueNas Zvol? I am really new to TrueNas and want to migrate a few Windows VMs. Most results from my search was from 2022 and 2 years is quite an old information since there have been updates along the way. TIA Edit: Just to Clarify, Proxmox is in its own baremetal system and at the same time TrueNas is in i…

(You may need to specify the input file format)

[David_Gonzalez]

thanks for the prompt response and suggested reading, but like I said, the VM disks I want to move are already ZVOLs on my TNS because I’m using ZFS+iSCSI on proxmox, so when I create the VMs on proxmox, their storage is created under my iscsi pool.

So In my case and as per your suggestion, could I simply use the already created storage and just adjust VM parameters on TNS or do I need to convert the vm-disk---- to zvol?

Maybe I wasn’t clear on my OP what I wanted to know is when I create the new VM on TNS, how do I import the already existing storage?.

Thanks a lot again

[truenas-fan]

ISCI means block level, so in theory that should just be a replication of the data, zvol in this case.

[David_Gonzalez]

ISCI means block level, so in theory that should just be a replication of the data, zvol in this case.

Yup, thing is these don´t show up when I create the VM and try to use existing disk.

But my guess is that I could just create an empty vol, shut down the VM and then either dd if= of= or qemu-convert… I guess.

[Stux]

@David_Gonzalez

thanks for the prompt response and suggested reading, but like I said, the VM disks I want to move are already ZVOLs on my TNS because I’m using ZFS+iSCSI on proxmox, so when I create the VMs on proxmox, their storage is created under my iscsi pool

I’m sorry, I didn’t think that’s what you meant. I thought you meant that TNS uses Zvols for VMs.

ANYWAY, it should just be a matter of pointing the VM at the Zvol then. I would expect that Proxmox uses “raw” against iSCSI disks.

If it doesn’t, I guess it won’t work without conversion (which could be done the same way I pointed out)

Either way, take a snapshot before you test and worst case, you can rollback.

[Stux]

@David_Gonzalez

Yup, thing is these don´t show up when I create the VM and try to use existing disk.

Perhaps you can’t select the ZVol because the extent is already in use by the iSCSI system… perhaps changet that?

Is is visible in /dev/zvol on the host?

[David_Gonzalez]

Perhaps you can’t select the ZVol because the extent is already in use by the iSCSI system… perhaps changet that?

Good suggestion, that might be it.

Is is visible in /dev/zvol on the host?

Yup, there they are

dgonzalez@nas:~$ ls /dev/zvol/store-fast1/
RockyIPA-c2llu9                vm-100-disk-0  vm-115-disk-0  vm-130-disk-1  vm-301-disk-0  vm-885-disk-2
ubuntubbs-xpfxug               vm-102-disk-0  vm-120-disk-0  vm-130-disk-2  vm-885-disk-0
ubuntubbs-xpfxug_ubnt24_clone  vm-105-disk-0  vm-130-disk-0  vm-300-disk-0  vm-885-disk-1

Now I guess I’ll have to unlink them/remove them from iSCSI?, I do not want to remove them because when I migrated storage from proxmox I removed the origin.

[jlw52761]

TrueNAS uses a single ZVOL for each of the VMs disks, iSCSI uses a single ZVOL for all disks with each VM disk using whatever the hypervisor format is underneath. I believe for Proxmox this is QCOW2. In either case, TrueNAS can’t attach the VM to the iSCSI ZVOL and be expected to boot a VM.

You can do all the conversion and transfer, otherwise use Clonezilla to clone the disk from source to destination VM over the network and be done.

[David_Gonzalez]

TrueNAS uses a single ZVOL for each of the VMs disks, iSCSI uses a single ZVOL for all disks with each VM disk using whatever the hypervisor format is underneath. I believe for Proxmox this is QCOW2. In either case, TrueNAS can’t attach the VM to the iSCSI ZVOL and be expected to boot a VM.

You can do all the conversion and transfer, otherwise use Clonezilla to clone the disk from source to destination VM over the network and be done.

Thanks, I guess I’m using all of them in RAW format and I see the disks under /dev/zvol and under the extents on iSCSI and they do work with my proxmox vms but what you say, makes sense, I’ll try to clone one of these disks and play around so no harm done.