++ ATOT official NEF thread part IV ++

[Red Squirrel]

Got my Proxmox cluster going. 2 physical nodes, 2 virtualized. The 2 virtualized ones will be phased out, and the old ESXi server that they're on will be converted into another Proxmox node once I'm done converting everything over. I'm almost done, and lot of the VMs on there I'm debating on if I even bother as I don't really use them anymore.

https://imgur.com/a/pve-cluster-build-74YcPuN

The forum messes up imgur links.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm a little too addicted to this, I like migrating VMs around just for fun because it's so cool that I can do it live without it being interrupted. I can even migrate storage live. This will make a future NAS/SAN upgrade so much easier. This is all stuff that VMware could do 10+ years ago when I was in IT... but it's so cool to have it in my own home and for free.

I will play with HA after Christmas. That will be nice to have, at least for the more important VMs.

 

[IronWing]

We found a leaf on our land for which the nearest tree is fifteen miles away. Now we have to figure out how it got there.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I can't fathom not having a tree for 15 miles. Are you in like a desert or something?

 

[IronWing]

We have trees on our land but not of that species. The tree in question grows at high elevation. But yes, we do live in a desert.

 

[bigboxes]

moo

 

[Red Squirrel]

I hate that vim is not installed by default on debian based OSes. Trying to edit a file from a live CD and can't do it. Tried to install it but getting errors with repositories. It's probably literally on the CD but apt just complains about some release file.

 

[sdifox]

Nyaa

 

[bigboxes]

moo

 

[sdifox]

Danish butter cookies nom nom

 

[sdifox]

Nyaa

 

[bigboxes]

moo

 

[Red Squirrel]

Almost done converting all my VMs. They're running on the new cluster now. There's a bunch of legacy VMs that I didn't use anymore that I won't bother converting though.

Probably going to keep the ESXi 5.5 box around for the next little while just in case, and once I feel confident enough to nuke the OS I'll make that box the 3rd PVE node.

Debating on ordering more ram for the machines too, they're both at 32GB, which is what the existing host has, but they can take up to 64GB so tempting to just max them out.

 

[Red Squirrel]

All VMs migrated except for the VPN server. That one is giving me some issues, the openvpn service is marked as "masked" whatever the hell that's suppose to mean, but it won't start because of that. I THINK I figured out the network issues but I can't play with that remotely or I might actually lose my connection considering I'm VPNed in to the existing server so think I'll save that for a day off when I'm home.

Worse case scenario I will build a new VPN server. I recently learned of a VPN solution called Wireguard that's supposedly easier to setup than OpenVPN so will try that.

HA will be the next thing to play with, but I'll do that another time. Will be better once I have 3 physical nodes.

 

[Red Squirrel]

"Meeeester speeeeaker"

I guess we're not going to hear that anymore.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Nef

 

[sdifox]

Nyaa

 

[bigboxes]

moo

 

[bigboxes]

moo

 

[Red Squirrel]

There's something about Christmas time that makes me want to spend money on myself. Already spent over a grand on my Proxmox cluster and now I'm looking at network switches lol. 10 gig stuff has really come down in price. I think I will wait it out though. Need to stop spending money for a bit.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Successfully migrated over the VPN server. Turns out the VPN server software was listening on the interface by name, and for whatever reason there's no real config file to edit, you have to rerun the entire setup process to reconfigure it. The interface name changed when porting the VM over to Proxmox.

In order to not lock myself out, I made a script on the existing VPN VM to shut the interface down for 10 minutes then bring it back up, this would give me a window to test connecting to the VPN server on the new VM server and if it failed at least the other one came back. Once I got it to work I then had to make sure the old one does not come back or it would cause an IP conflict.

The old VM server is more or less ready to be retired now. I won't bother converting the legacy VMs that I no longer use. If I need access to them at some point I will keep the vmdk files. At some later time I might convert those over to raw images so I can mount them if ever I need access to anything. That sounds like a job for when I get a tape drive. Just throw them on tapes and store away.

Pretty excited at all of this, been meaning to do this for so long. With Broadcom destroying VMware it felt like a good time to do it too.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Live storage migration is the coolest thing. Can migrate the actual storage while the VM is live. Not something I need to do very often but useful if I create a new LUN and want to shuffle stuff around.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Upgrading IPMI firmware of my old VM server over the VPN. I like to live dangerously.

I'm hoping that a newer version will have a console that doesn't require Java, if I'm lucky I'll be able to install a new OS without needing to move it to my workbench.

This process will also involve rebooting the server for the first time in over 5 years.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Upgrade done successfully. Actually it didn't reboot the server, I guess they meant it reboots the IPMI part and not the whole server. Bonus.

Unfortunately it still requires Java runtime. Modern browsers don't support that anymore. And even when they did, it was always a pita to get working.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Hmm turns out you can still get the runtime to work. Could have sworn I read somewhere that they were now blocking it for security reasons.

I installed Windows 11 in a VM and was able to get access to the console that way using Java. The windows 7 VM was giving me issues accessing lot of sites including the Java one. Think it's so old that the root certs are outdated.

Before I jump the gun and wipe the ESXi box think I will take an image of it first, and see if I can actually run it in a VM. Just in case I need access to some of the legacy VMs or feel nostalgic and want to fire up my UO game server again. That sounds like a tomorrow job.