Properly renaming Proxmox nodes

In the event you need to rename a Proxmox PVE node you will probably stumble upon this article :

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:

1. Backup your /etc/pve directory

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Remove the old node name from /etc/pve/nodes

5. Reboot for the changes to take effect — the old node should be gone and your VMs should be starting!