Properly renaming Proxmox nodes
In the event you need to rename a Proxmox PVE node you will probably stumble upon this article :
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Renaming_a_PVE_node
I followed most of these instructions, but missed a crucial bit :
This must be done on a empty node.
Yeah…whoops! After rebooting you might find that your VMs are not running!
Thankfully it is a simple-ish fix:
Backup your /etc/pve directory
Move the files from the /etc/pve/nodes/oldnodename/qemu-server to their respective new directory, for example to /etc/pve/nodes/newnodename/qemu-server
You may have to do the above for lxc, priv and openvx folders too, but I only use Proxmox for VMs so I didn’t need to.
If you have custom directories you need to reassign them to the new node by going to Datacenter > Storage > directoryName and fixing up the “Nodes” attribute to reflect the new name.
Remove the old node name from /etc/pve/nodes
Reboot for the changes to take effect — the old node should be gone and your VMs should be starting!