esh-pve-cluster: Proxmox VE 8 → 9 upgrade plan (PLAN ONLY — not executed)

Requested by Prime via Miranda, 2026-10-02 (thread 01M3YX5QGQ5V8BQXYM46E5T3PB). Do not execute without a further green light from Prime. Facts below were read live on 2026-10-02 ~1930 PT, read-only (including pve8to9 --full on both nodes). Re-run pve8to9 --full and check the official wiki (pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Upgrade_from_8_to_9) on the day; anything that disagrees wins.

The cluster today

	`pve` (fleet: esh-pve)	`esh-nas-pve` (fleet: esh-pve-nas)
Mgmt IP	10.0.250.35	10.0.50.55
HW	Minisforum MS-01, i9-13900H, 62 GiB	Xeon W-1250, 125 GiB
PVE / kernel	8.4.20 / 6.8.12-42 (‑43 pending)	8.4.20 / 6.8.12-13 (up 6 weeks; ‑43 pending)
Root	ext4 on LVM `pve/root` (96 G, 69 G free), VG free 16 G	ZFS `nvme/ROOT/pve-1` (pool `nvme`)
Boot	UEFI, GRUB (proxmox-boot-tool not in use)	UEFI, GRUB reading ZFS (proxmox-boot-tool not in use)
Extras	NVIDIA 580.178.04 DKMS (RTX 2000E Ada → CT 110 esh-ml1)	ZFS pools `nvme`, `ssd`, `tank` (175 T raidz2×2, DEGRADED)
Guests	100 esh-vm-docker, 101 esh-vm-db, 108 esh-scale, 110 esh-ml1, 111 esh-matter	103 esh-nas (NFS server 10.0.50.50), 104 vm-esh-nas, 105 plex, 106 filebot, 107 jellyfin

Repos: pve-no-subscription + Debian bookworm main/contrib, no Ceph, no HA resources. Quorum: 2 nodes × 1 vote, no QDevice, no two_node.

⚠ Findings that come before the upgrade

tank on esh-nas-pve is DEGRADED, and has been since about 2026-08-20. In raidz2-0, disk wwn-0x5000c500c91df554 shows 36 CKSUM errors ("too many errors"). The last resilver (Aug 20, 3.11 T) logged 6,676,313 errors. "No known data errors" and SMART is clean (0 reallocated, 0 pending, 0 CRC, 11,006 h). That vdev is down to one disk of redundancy. Fix first: zpool clear tank + a full scrub; if errors return, replace the disk. Do not upgrade this node with the pool degraded.
Remote access to ESH depends on CT 108 (esh-scale) on pve. Measured path from NH3: 10.100.50.46 → 100.64.0.2 (esh-scale) → 10.0.50.1 → ESH. When pve reboots, NH3/ANA lose ESH until 108 is back. If pve does not come back, there is no remote recovery path (esh-pve's AMT is not set up). Either someone is at ESH for pve's reboot, or set up esh-pve's AMT (+ phone-home, as done for nh3-pve) first.
pve8to9 FAIL on both nodes: the systemd-boot meta-package is installed. Both nodes boot via GRUB, so remove it (apt remove systemd-boot; systemd-boot-efi stays).

Pre-flight (no guest downtime)

Backups: one-off vzdump of all ten guests to pbs-ana in snapshot mode, right before the window, including 108 and 110, which the nightly job does not back up. Check each new snapshot is listed. Plus a host config backup per node: /etc and /etc/pve tar to PBS or the NAS.
Bring both nodes to the latest 8.4 (apt update && apt full-upgrade), then pve8to9 --full must show no FAIL.
Clear the pve8to9 items:
- both: apt remove systemd-boot;
- pve: echo 'grub-efi-amd64 grub2/force_efi_extra_removable boolean true' | debconf-set-selections -v -u;
- both, optional but recommended: enable non-free-firmware, apt install intel-microcode.
Pin NIC names by MAC (systemd .link) on both nodes before the upgrade. Debian 13's systemd may change predictable names, and a renamed uplink leaves vmbr0 with no link: the whole node is off the network. pve8to9 did not flag it; this is a precaution. Template: playbooks/nh3-pve-pin-nic-names.yaml. Uplinks today: pve enp3s0f0np0 (X710), esh-nas-pve enp5s0f0.
NVIDIA on pve: 580.178.04 is DKMS-built for 6.8. After the dist-upgrade and before rebooting, dkms status must show the module built for the new kernel; if not, reinstall the driver for trixie before rebooting. esh-ml1 (CT 110) is the fleet's only embed/rerank backend behind LiteLLM, and albok-service now depends on it. Put nh3-ml1 (its twin) behind the gateway first, so embeddings survive pve's window.
Root snapshots for rollback:
- esh-nas-pve: zfs snapshot -r nvme/ROOT@pre-pve9.
- pve: lvcreate -s -L 15G -n root-pre-pve9 pve/root (VG has 16 G free).

Order and window

Recommended: esh-nas-pve first, then pve, in one evening window of about 2–2.5 h. Doing the NAS node first keeps the remote path (CT 108 on pve) up while the data-heavy node is worked on, so anything that goes wrong there is still diagnosable from outside.

On pve, cleanly shut down VM 101 (esh-vm-db, disk on NFS from 10.0.50.50) and VM 100 (esh-vm-docker, hard NFS mounts). A NAS reboot under them means I/O hangs or unkillable D-state (2026 incident).
esh-nas-pve: switch repos, dist-upgrade, reboot. Verify that all pools import, tank state, NFS exports, and that guests 103–107 are up.
Start VMs 100 and 101 on pve; verify the DB and Docker services.
pve: switch repos, dist-upgrade, check dkms status, reboot. Verify CT 108 (mesh), CT 110 (TEI answering through LiteLLM), CT 111 (Matter), VMs 100/101.
pve8to9 --full on both (it has post-upgrade checks), pvecm status (quorate), guest list.

Repo switch, per node (verify against the wiki on the day):

sed -i 's/bookworm/trixie/g' /etc/apt/sources.list            # Debian main/updates/security
# replace the bookworm pve-no-subscription line with deb822 /etc/apt/sources.list.d/proxmox.sources:
#   Types: deb
#   URIs: http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve
#   Suites: trixie
#   Components: pve-no-subscription
#   Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/proxmox-archive-keyring.gpg
apt update && apt dist-upgrade        # keep local config where asked unless the wiki says otherwise

Expected downtime and guest behaviour

The apt phase (15–30 min per node): guests keep running.
The reboot phase: that node's guests stop and restart on boot (all are onboot=1):
- roughly 5–10 min for pve;
- 10–20 min for esh-nas-pve (the 175 T tank import, NFS);
- VMs 100/101 are down from step 1 until step 3, roughly 30–45 min.
No migration: no HA and no live migration (local storage on both nodes, cpu=host, different CPUs). Guests are stopped, not moved.
Quorum: while either node reboots, the other loses quorum. Its running guests keep running, but you cannot start, stop or reconfigure guests and /etc/pve is read-only until the node is back. Do not use pvecm expected 1 unless something is stuck.
During pve's reboot:
- ESH loses its mesh router (no remote path; the Matter/HA bridge drops);
- fleet embeddings go down unless nh3-ml1 is behind the gateway;
- the ESH AdGuard resolver (on esh-vm-docker) is down; the DNS ring falls back to the other sites.

Rollback: honest version

There is no supported in-place downgrade from PVE 9 / Debian 13 back to 8 / 12. What exists:

esh-nas-pve: zfs rollback nvme/ROOT/pve-1@pre-pve9 from a rescue shell (PVE ISO, or console). ⚠ Never run zpool upgrade on nvme after the upgrade. GRUB reads that pool directly, and new feature flags can make it unbootable and break this rollback.
pve: merge the LVM snapshot (lvconvert --merge pve/root-pre-pve9) from rescue, then reboot. The snapshot only holds while its 15 G covers the changes; drop it once 9 is confirmed good.
Last resort: reinstall 8.4 and restore /etc and guests from the pre-flight PBS backups (hours).
Guest data is not touched by the host upgrade, so the risk is host availability, not data loss. Both rollbacks need console access, which is why finding 2 matters.

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