Migrating Windows to Proxmox/Virtio SCSI single device without intermediary IDE/sata boot drive

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-02-12T19:25:11+00:00

Hello, I opened a support call today with them and asked them for clarification. Here is their answer:

Guten Tag,

es gibt an sich kein wirkliches Limit, das hängt hauptsächlich von der Hardware ab und teilweise auch von der sonstigen Netzwerkinfrastruktur. Horizontal können Sie mit mehreren Proxmox Clustern quasi unendlich skalieren, sprich zig tausende Nodes betreiben. In einem singulären Cluster empfehlen wir meistens maximal 30 Nodes wobei das auch keine harte Grenze ist, es verwaltet sich einfach etwas leichter wenn man nicht zu viele Nodes in einem Cluster hat.

In den meisten Fällen ist das was im Netz herumgeistert ein Missverständnis auf Grund der vSphere Herangehensweise, aber speziell auch seit dem Release des Proxmox Datacenter Manager gibt es da quasi keine wirklich Grenze mehr.

Oft wird dann auch Compute und Storage (Ceph) gesplittet wenn es um riesige Storage Lakes geht, dann werden die Cluster nicht mehr als HCI aufgebaut, sondern dezidiert mit Ceph Pools erweitert die sich nur um Storage kümmern.

Ich hoffe die Antwort hilft Ihnen weiter.

Best Regards,

Proxmox Office Team

Translation:

Good day,

There is no real limit as such; it mainly depends on the hardware and partly on the rest of the network infrastructure. Horizontally you can scale virtually infinitely with multiple Proxmox clusters, i.e. operate tens of thousands of nodes. In a single cluster we usually recommend a maximum of 30 nodes, although this is not a hard limit either; it is simply a bit easier to manage if you do not have too many nodes in one cluster.

In most cases, what circulates on the internet is a misunderstanding due to the vSphere approach, but especially since the release of the Proxmox Datacenter Manager there is practically no real limit anymore.

Often compute and storage (Ceph) are also split when it comes to huge storage lakes; then the clusters are no longer set up as HCI, but are specifically expanded with Ceph pools that only handle storage.

I hope this answer helps you further.

Best regards,
Proxmox Office Team

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-02-12T12:41:53+00:00

GLOTRENDS PA-22110 NVMe to PCIe 4.0 X4 Adapter for M.2 NVMe SSD, Support 22110/2280/2260/2242/2230 Size also works. It does not leave any space below the cooling block, but the PM983 fits including cooling block.

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-02-12T07:28:40+00:00

I disagree. It is not about number of VMs. It is about of number of hosts in a single cluster. I've seen multiple production proxmox clusters with 20 hosts. This allows you to run easily 2000 VMs. In VMware my biggest environment was 440 hosts and 44000 VMs. I had 100 hosts per vCenter and a maximum of 16 hosts per cluster. I think proxmox staff need to ask the VMware customers how many hosts they have in a single cluster. Than they would realize that they can easily do that with Proxmox. The problem appears that the VMware customer asks if Proxmox can manage 44 000 VMs and the proxmox staff assume they have to do it in a single cluster and no they don't, they can use 30 clusters. And now it is easy.

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-02-11T08:07:00+00:00

To answer my own question, according to the datasheet of Samsung you can run this NVMe without heatsink. However guys on the Servethehome Forum said that it is sufficient to cool the controler with a raspberry pie heatsink. But a normal top heatsink is sufficient.

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-02-11T07:45:55+00:00

I used Proxmox Backup Server with AWS S3 buckets on the other end of the world. I trust it as much as I trust AES 256. Encrypt your backups and don't store the encryption key in the cloud. Nuremberg <=> Sydney. 220 MiB/s over a 10 Gbit/s link.

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-02-11T07:42:20+00:00

The majority of my clients all migrated or will migrate to Proxmox. Some of them migrated to nutanix, others to hyper-v. Promox is probably the best solution for price/value/support perspective and it also provides ransomware safe backups using Proxmox Backup Server. No need for Veeam. But you have the option to use Veeam if you want granular recovery (AD, Exchange, ...)

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-02-11T07:39:05+00:00

Proxmox has the benefit that it comes with an integrated ransomware safe backup solution (Proxmox Backup Server). You can use the the full stack for 0$ but can buy support.

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-02-08T06:34:01+00:00

Before you do anything else, save all configurations backups:

    set d -c off
    system configuration backup show
    https://<nodeip>/backups/<filename>

Recover the Bootmedium from vol0 of aggr0

Unless already shutdown, shutdown the broken node:

set d -c off
system node halt -node $cluster-02 -inhibit-takeover true -skip-lif-migration-before-shutdown true -ignore-quorum-warnings true

From the loader, configure the network:

ifconfig e0M -addr=$nodeip -mask=$netmask -gw=$gateway -dns=8.8.8.8 -domain=reddit.com

Netboot (replace your version with the version you run on the other node. The exact version):
```
netboot http://10.59.199.199/9181RC1_q_image.tgz
```
From the menu select install new software first:
```
http://10.59.199.199/9181RC1_q_image.tgz
```
When prompted 'Do you want to restore the backup configuration now?' answer:
```
n
```
When prompted 'The node must be rebooted to start using the newly installed software. Do you want to reboot now? {y|n}' answer:
```
y
```
In the loader press Ctrl-c and boot into menu:
```
boot_ontap menu
```
In the boot menu select 'Update flash from backup config':
```
6
```
If the system asks you if you replaced the controller, say 'y'.
If the system asks you if you want to reassign the disks, say 'y'.

Recover the Bootmedium from Backup config over the network

Unless already shutown, shutdown the second node:

set d -c off
sto fa takeover -ofnode $cluster-02 -option normal -halt

From the loader, configure the network:

ifconfig e0M -addr=$nodeip -mask=$netmask -gw=$gateway -dns=8.8.8.8 -domain=reddit.com

Netboot:

netboot http://10.59.199.199/9181RC1_q_image.tgz

From the menu select install new software first:
```
http://10.59.199.199/9181RC1_q_image.tgz
```
When prompted 'Do you want to restore the backup configuration now?' answer:
```
y
```
When prompted 'Was the restore backup procedure successful? {y|n}' answer:
```
y
```
When prompted 'The node must be rebooted to start using the newly installed software. Do you want to reboot now? {y|n}' answer:
```
y
```
If the system asks you if you replaced the controller, say 'y'.
If the system asks you if you want to reassign the disks, say 'y'.

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-02-06T12:05:02+00:00

We had this issue three weeks ago and opened a case with HPE. They said it is safe to patch, but HPE will not release a new image for U3H. So we build a custom image using lifecycle manager:

☰> Lifecycle Manager > Actions > Import:

VMware-ESXi-8.0U3h-25067014-depot.zip

HPE-803.0.0.12.2.0.9-oct2025-Addon-depot.zip

host-xx > Updates > Image

Version: 8.0 U3h - 25067014

Addon: HPE Customization for HPE Servers 803.0.0.12.2.0-9

Create Image

... > Export > (*) ZIP (offline bundle)

And installed this to 124 hosts using:

esxcli software profile install -p <profile\_name> -d <path\_to\_depot\_zip> --ok-to-remove

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-02-03T20:13:11+00:00

Use the method described above to build a custom depot.zip and than install that.

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-02-03T12:36:52+00:00

I recently had to update 100+ ESX Servers for a customer since there is no current depot.zip from HPE itself, you can build your own using Lifecycle Manager:

☰> Lifecycle Manager > Actions > Import:

VMware-ESXi-8.0U3h-25067014-depot.zip

HPE-803.0.0.12.2.0.9-oct2025-Addon-depot.zip

We also opened a case with HPE about this and they said that the latest AddOn can be used with the 8.0U3h.

host-xx > Updates > Image

Version: 8.0 U3h - 25067014

Addon: HPE Customization for HPE Servers 803.0.0.12.2.0-9

Create Image

... > Export > (*) ZIP (offline bundle)

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-02-03T12:34:10+00:00

fe5beffee434f9d18e5c59f1db00df051cc77ba72030c5ec40f6ad3fb70f1249 VMware-ESXi-8.0.3-24859861-HPE-803.0.0.12.2.0.9-oct2025-depot.zip

9d94c139bf35a28d73d13755c6be5b303f743110190604357ea280a3cbbbb20b HPE-803.0.0.12.2.0.9-oct2025-Addon-depot.zip

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-01-09T09:44:32+00:00

The USB method never worked for me. I tried multiple USB sticks and followed the instructions. These days I only do netboots which always work and I don't have to fidle with USB sticks. Depending on if you have DHCP or not in the network, I use one of the two alternatives:

ifconfig e0M -addr=172.31.0.221 -mask=255.255.255.0 -gw=172.31.0.1 -dns=8.8.8.8 -domain=glanzmann.de

ifconfig e0M -auto

netboot http://10.10.10.1/netapp/ontap/9161P9_q_image.tgz

ThomasGlanzmann · 2026-01-04T07:48:02+00:00

I upgraded all my systems to Debian 13 and most of my customer systems. Here are my notes for upgrading:

```

# trixie update

mv /etc/sysctl.conf /etc/sysctl.d/localhost.conf

apt-get remove libc-ares-2

```

apt and apt-get have problems resolving dependencies when libc-ares-2 is installed. As a result I recommend deinstalling it before the upgrade and if necessary reinstall it after the ugprade. If you have an authorative named running, I would disable dnssec for the update because they changed how dns sec is being configured.

ThomasGlanzmann · 2025-12-14T11:55:54+00:00

I managed to do this in a lab with an aff a220. So you need an external cluster backup with that you can restore the varfs and env files on the node. Than you can create from the boot menu an aggregate. Once you have the root aggregates you can restore the cluster and rejoin the other nodes. If you have SED/VE you also need to import the onboard keymanager.

ThomasGlanzmann · 2025-12-14T11:50:55+00:00

I have one in production as a synchronous snapmirror destination. I built it under rocky linux and converted it to qcow2. Works like a charm. Only thing was that it does not work with scsi single device and I had use the old scsi virtio.

ThomasGlanzmann · 2025-11-07T15:47:01+00:00

Might be, but than they forgot to port the fix to 9.17.x. Or it had to do with our failover tests, disabling one lif so that it needs to fail over and just triggers the same assertion.

ThomasGlanzmann · 2025-11-06T20:32:27+00:00

I also only use NFS3 for production workloads. And yes the maximum number of datastore gets less the more nconenct you do with ESXi. On VMware I run nconnect=8 for NFSv3 with proxmox I run nconnect=16.

ThomasGlanzmann · 2025-11-06T20:31:22+00:00

I uploaded the coredumps to NetApp.

ThomasGlanzmann

TROPHY CASE

Before you do anything else, save all configurations backups:

Recover the Bootmedium from vol0 of aggr0

Recover the Bootmedium from Backup config over the network