Changing Proxmox Boot Devices

I wanted to use the Intel SSDs as the boot devices in my replacement server. This meant I needed to migrate back to the 2.5" HDDs.

Prep Work

Ensure that autoexpand is off

• zpool get autoexpand rpool

NAME   PROPERTY    VALUE   SOURCE

rpool  autoexpand  off     default

Adding the 2.5" HDDs

For all the below examples /dev/sda is one of the existing boot drives and /dev/sde and /dev/sdf are the new drives.

Install the hard drives

• Power-off the system first if you don't have hot swap

Copy the partition tables

• sfdisk -d /dev/sda | grep -v last-lba > ssd_part_table
• sed -e '/^label-id:/d' -e 's/,\s*uuid=[-0-9A-F]*//g' ssd_part_table | sfdisk /dev/sde
• sed -e '/^label-id:/d' -e 's/,\s*uuid=[-0-9A-F]*//g' ssd_part_table | sfdisk /dev/sdf

Copy the BIOS data

• dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sde1
• dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdf1

Copy the Boot

• proxmox-boot-tool format /dev/sde2
• proxmox-boot-tool format /dev/sdf2
• proxmox-boot-tool init /dev/sde2
• proxmox-boot-tool init /dev/sdf2

Add to the ZFS pool

• zpool attach rpool ata-INTEL_SSDSC2BX800G4_XXXXXX-part3 /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-XXXXX1-part3
• zpool attach rpool ata-INTEL_SSDSC2BX800G4_XXXXXX-part3 /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-XXXXX2-part3

Hardware Changes

• turn off the server
• remove the drives
• ensure server still boots

Remove old drives from zpool

• zpool status rpool
• zpool detach rpool <new id>
• zpool detach rpool <new id>

Remove old drives from boot

• proxmox-boot-tool status
• proxmox-bool-tool clean
• proxmox-boot-tool status