Merge pull request #267 from gyptazy/release/1.1.5

release: Create release 1.1.5

.changelogs/1.1.0/114_refactor_code_base.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+fixed:
+  - Refactored code base for ProxLB [#114]
+  - Switched to `pycodestyle` for linting [#114]
+  - Package building will be done within GitHub actions pipeline [#114]
+  - ProxLB now only returns a warning when no guests for further balancing are not present (instead of quitting) [132#]
+  - All nodes (according to the free resources) will be used now [#130]
+  - Fixed logging outputs where highest/lowest were mixed-up [#129]
+  - Stop balancing when movement would get worste (new force param to enfoce for affinity rules) [#128]
+  - Added requested documentation regarding Proxmox HA groups [#127]
+  - Rewrite of the whole affinity/anti-affinity rules evaluation and placement [#123]
+  - Fixed the `ignore` parameter for nodes where the node and guests on the node will be untouched [#102]

.changelogs/1.1.0/125-add-proxmox-api-authentication-support.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+feature:
+  - Add Proxmox API authentication support. [#125]

.changelogs/1.1.0/137_fix_systemd_unit_file.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Fix the systemd unit file to start ProxLB after pveproxy (by @robertdahlem). [#137]

.changelogs/1.1.0/release_meta.yml

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+date: 2025-04-01

.changelogs/1.1.1/163_fix_ignore_vm_tag.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Fix tag evluation for VMs for being ignored for further balancing [#163]

.changelogs/1.1.1/165_improve_logging_servity.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Improve logging verbosity of messages that had a wrong servity [#165]

.changelogs/1.1.1/168_add_more_flexible_schedules.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+feature:
+  - Add a more flexible way to define schedules in minutes or hours (by @gyptazy) [#168]

.changelogs/1.1.1/171_set_correct_python_path_docker_image.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Fix Python path for Docker entrypoint (by @crandler) [#170]

.changelogs/1.1.1/174_honor_balancing_activation_value.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Honor the value when balancing should not be performed and stop balancing [#174]

.changelogs/1.1.1/176_change_turn_daemon_mode_on_default.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+changed:
+  - Change the default behaviour of the daemon mode to active [#176]

.changelogs/1.1.1/180_change_default_balancing_to_used_instead_assigned.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+changed:
+  - Change the default banalcing mode to used instead of assigned [#180]

.changelogs/1.1.1/184_validate_for_sufficient_user_permissions.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+feature:
+  - Add validation for the minimum required permissions of a user in Proxmox [#184]

.changelogs/1.1.1/185-logging-handler-for-no-systemd-integration.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fix:
+  - add handler to log messages with severity less than info to the screen when there is no systemd integration, for instance, inside a docker container (by @glitchvern) [#185]

.changelogs/1.1.1/187_allow_use_of_minutes_instead_of_hours.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - allow the use of minutes instead of hours and only accept hours or minutes in the format (by @glitchvern) [#187]

.changelogs/1.1.1/195_set_cpu_used_to_cpu_usage_times_core_count.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Set cpu_used to the cpu usage, which is a percent, times the total number of cores to get a number where guest cpu_used can be added to nodes cpu_used and be meaningful (by @glitchvern) [#195]

.changelogs/1.1.1/197_remove_hard_coded_memory_usage_from_lowest_usage_node.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Remove hard coded memory usage from lowest usage node and use method and mode specified in configuration instead (by @glitchvern) [#197]

.changelogs/1.1.1/200_requery_zero_guest_cpu_used.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Requery a guest if that running guest reports 0 cpu usage (by @glitchvern) [#200]

.changelogs/1.1.1/204_fix_migration_log_relationship_of_guest_type.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Fix the guest type relationship in the logs when a migration job failed (by @gyptazy) [#204]

.changelogs/1.1.1/205_add_api_upstream_error_message_on_migration_failure.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+added:
+  - Providing the API upstream error message when migration fails in debug mode (by @gyptazy) [#205]

.changelogs/1.1.1/release_meta.yml

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+date: 2025-04-20

.changelogs/1.1.2/137_fix_systemd_unit_file.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Fix systemd unit file to run after network on non PVE nodes (by @robertdahlem) [#137]

.changelogs/1.1.2/157_add_proxmox_api_retry_mechanism.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+added:
+  - Add a configurable retry mechanism when connecting to the Proxmox API (by @gyptazy) [#157]

.changelogs/1.1.2/218_add_1_to_one_relationship_guest_node_pinning.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+added:
+  - Add 1-to-1 relationships between guest and hypervisor node to ping a guest on a node (by @gyptazy) [#218]

.changelogs/1.1.2/222_fix_force_type_cast_cpu_metrics_to_int.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Force type cast cpu count of guests to int for some corner cases where a str got returned (by @gyptazy). [#222]

.changelogs/1.1.2/release_meta.yml

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+date: 2025-05-13

.changelogs/1.1.3/189_add_reload_function.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+added:
+  - Add relaod (SIGHUP) function to ProxLB to reload the configuration (by @gyptazy). [#189]

.changelogs/1.1.3/232_align_maintenance_mode_proxmox_ha.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Align maintenance mode with Proxmox HA maintenance mode (by @gyptazy). [#232]

.changelogs/1.1.3/239_add_optional_delay_time_until_service_starts.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+added:
+  - Add optional wait time parameter to delay execution until the service takes action (by @gyptazy). #239

.changelogs/1.1.3/241_make_amount_of_parallel_migrations_configurable.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+added:
+  - Make the amount of parallel migrations configurable (by @gyptazy). [#241]

.changelogs/1.1.3/94_cpu_balancing_use_avg_instead_current_consumption.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+changed:
+  - Use the average CPU consumption of a guest within the last 60 minutes instead of the current CPU usage (by @philslab-ninja & @gyptazy). [#94]

.changelogs/1.1.3/release_meta.yml

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+date: 2025-06-19

.changelogs/1.1.4/245_add_guest_pinning_to_groups_of_nodes.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+added:
+  - Allow pinning of guests to a group of nodes (@gyptazy). [#245]

.changelogs/1.1.4/248_fix_dry_run_combination_balancing_disabled.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Fixed an issue where balancing was performed in combination of deactivated balancing and dry-run mode (@gyptazy). [#248]

.changelogs/1.1.4/255_fix_loglevels.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+fixed:
+  - Modified log levels to make output lighter at INFO level (@pmarasse) [#255]

.changelogs/1.1.4/release_meta.yml

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+date: 2025-06-27

.changelogs/1.1.5/260_allow_custom_api_ports.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+added:
+  - Allow custom API ports instead of fixed tcp/8006 (@gyptazy). [#260]

.changelogs/1.1.5/release_meta.yml

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+date: 2025-07-14

.flake8

@@ -1,3 +0,0 @@
-[flake8]
-per-file-ignores =
-    proxlb: E501,E221,E266,E231,E127,E222,E128

.github/workflows/02-create-package.yml

@@ -1,26 +0,0 @@
-name: Run basic pipeline on push
-on: [push]
-jobs:
-  build:
-    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
-    strategy:
-      matrix:
-        python-version: ["3.8"]
-    steps:
-      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
-      - name: Set up Python for ProxLB
-        uses: actions/setup-python@v4
-        with:
-          python-version: ${{ matrix.python-version }}
-      - name: Install dependencies for ProxLB
-        run: |
-          python -m pip install --upgrade pip
-          pip install pytest proxmoxer flake8
-          if [ -f requirements.txt ]; then pip install -r requirements.txt; fi
-      - name: Run Python linting
-        run: |
-          python3 -m flake8 proxlb
-      - name: Create distro packages
-        run: |
-          cd packaging
-          ./01_package.sh

.github/workflows/10-code-liniting.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+name: Code linting
+on: [push]
+jobs:
+  build:
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    strategy:
+      matrix:
+        python-version: ["3.8"]
+    steps:
+      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
+      - name: Setup dependencies for code linting
+        uses: actions/setup-python@v4
+        with:
+          python-version: ${{ matrix.python-version }}
+      - name: Install additional dependencies for code linting
+        run: |
+          sudo apt-get update
+          sudo apt-get -y install python3-pycodestyle pycodestyle
+      - name: Run code linting on ProxLB Python code
+        run: |
+          pycodestyle proxlb/*

.github/workflows/20-pipeline-build-deb-package.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+name: "Build package: .deb"
+on: [push]
+jobs:
+  lint-code-proxlb:
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    strategy:
+      matrix:
+        python-version: ["3.8"]
+    steps:
+      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
+      - name: Setup dependencies for code linting
+        uses: actions/setup-python@v4
+        with:
+          python-version: ${{ matrix.python-version }}
+      - name: Install additional dependencies for code linting
+        run: |
+          sudo apt-get update
+          sudo apt-get -y install python3-pycodestyle pycodestyle
+      - name: Run code linting on ProxLB Python code
+        run: |
+          pycodestyle proxlb/* && \
+          echo "OK: Code linting successfully performed on ProxLB code."
+
+  build-package-debian:
+    needs: lint-code-proxlb
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    steps:
+      - name: Check out repository
+        uses: actions/checkout@v3
+        with:
+          ref: ${{ github.ref }}
+
+      - name: Set up Docker with Debian image
+        run: |
+          docker pull debian:latest
+
+      - name: Build DEB package in Docker container
+        run: |
+          docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/workspace -w /workspace debian:latest bash -c "
+            # Install dependencies
+            apt-get update && \
+            apt-get install -y python3 python3-setuptools debhelper dh-python python3-pip python3-stdeb python3-proxmoxer python3-requests python3-urllib3 devscripts python3-all && \
+            # Build package using stdeb / setuptools
+            # python3 setup.py --command-packages=stdeb.command bdist_deb && \
+            # Build native package
+            dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc && \
+            mkdir package && \
+            mv ../*.deb package/ && \
+            echo 'OK: Debian package successfully created.'
+          "
+
+      - name: Upload Debian package python3-proxlb as artifact
+        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
+        with:
+          name: debian-package
+          path: package/*.deb
+
+  integration-test-debian:
+    needs: build-package-debian
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    steps:
+      - name: Download Debian package artifact
+        uses: actions/download-artifact@v4
+        with:
+          name: debian-package
+          path: package/
+
+      - name: Set up Docker with Debian image
+        run: docker pull debian:latest
+
+      - name: Install and test Debian package in Docker container
+        run: |
+          docker run --rm -v $(pwd)/package:/package -w /package debian:latest bash -c "
+            apt-get update && \
+            apt-get install -y systemd && \
+            apt-get install -y ./proxlb*.deb && \
+            python3 -c 'import proxlb; print(\"OK: Debian package successfully installed.\")'
+          "

.github/workflows/20-pipeline-build-rpm-package.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,96 @@
+name: "Build package: .rpm"
+on: [push]
+jobs:
+  lint-code-proxlb:
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    strategy:
+      matrix:
+        python-version: ["3.8"]
+    steps:
+      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
+      - name: Setup dependencies for code linting
+        uses: actions/setup-python@v4
+        with:
+          python-version: ${{ matrix.python-version }}
+      - name: Install additional dependencies for code linting
+        run: |
+          sudo apt-get update
+          sudo apt-get -y install python3-pycodestyle pycodestyle
+      - name: Run code linting on ProxLB Python code
+        run: |
+          pycodestyle proxlb/* && \
+          echo "OK: Code linting successfully performed on ProxLB code."
+
+  build-package-rpm:
+    needs: lint-code-proxlb
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    steps:
+      - name: Check out repository
+        uses: actions/checkout@v3
+        with:
+          ref: 'development'
+
+      - name: Set up Docker with Debian image
+        run: |
+          docker pull debian:latest
+
+      - name: Build DEB package in Docker container
+        run: |
+          docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/workspace -w /workspace debian:latest bash -c "
+            # Install dependencies
+            apt-get update && \
+            apt-get install -y python3 python3-setuptools rpm debhelper dh-python python3-pip python3-stdeb python3-proxmoxer python3-requests python3-urllib3 && \
+            # Build package
+            python3 setup.py --command-packages=stdeb.command bdist_rpm && \
+            echo 'OK: RPM package successfully created.'
+          "
+
+      - name: Upload RPM package python3-proxlb as artifact
+        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
+        with:
+          name: rpm-package
+          path: dist/*.rpm
+
+  # integration-test-rpm-rockylinux-9:
+  #   needs: build-package-rpm
+  #   runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+  #   steps:
+  #     - name: Download RPM package artifact
+  #       uses: actions/download-artifact@v4
+  #       with:
+  #         name: rpm-package
+  #         path: dist/
+
+  #     - name: Set up Docker with RockyLinux 9 image
+  #       run: docker pull rockylinux:9
+
+  #     - name: Install and test RPM package in Rocky Linux Docker container
+  #       run: |
+  #         docker run --rm -v $(pwd)/dist:/dist -w /dist rockylinux:9 bash -c "
+  #           # DNF does not handle wildcards well
+  #           rpm_file=\$(ls proxlb*.noarch.rpm) && \
+  #           dnf install -y \$rpm_file && \
+  #           python3 -c 'import proxlb; print(\"OK: RPM package successfully installed.\")'
+  #         "
+
+  # integration-test-rpm-rockylinux-8:
+  #   needs: build-package-rpm
+  #   runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+  #   steps:
+  #     - name: Download RPM package artifact
+  #       uses: actions/download-artifact@v4
+  #       with:
+  #         name: rpm-package
+  #         path: dist/
+
+  #     - name: Set up Docker with RockyLinux 8 image
+  #       run: docker pull rockylinux:8
+
+  #     - name: Install and test RPM package in Rocky Linux Docker container
+  #       run: |
+  #         docker run --rm -v $(pwd)/dist:/dist -w /dist rockylinux:8 bash -c "
+  #           # DNF does not handle wildcards well
+  #           rpm_file=\$(ls proxlb*.noarch.rpm) && \
+  #           dnf install -y \$rpm_file && \
+  #           python3 -c 'import proxlb; print(\"OK: RPM package successfully installed.\")'
+  #         "

.github/workflows/30-pipeline-build-container-amd64.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+name: "Build Container Image: AMD64"
+on: [push]
+jobs:
+  build:
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    steps:
+    - name: Checkout repository
+      uses: actions/checkout@v4
+    - name: Set up QEMU
+      uses: docker/setup-qemu-action@v3
+    - name: Set up Docker Buildx
+      uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v3
+    - name: Build amd64 image and save as tar
+      run: |
+        docker buildx build \
+          --platform linux/amd64 \
+          --load \
+          -t proxlb-image:amd64 \
+          .
+
+        docker save proxlb-image:amd64 -o proxlb_image_amd64.tar
+    - name: Upload Docker image artifact
+      uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
+      with:
+        name: proxlb-image-amd64
+        path: proxlb_image_amd64.tar

.github/workflows/30-pipeline-build-container-arm64.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+name: "Build Container Image: ARM64"
+on: [push]
+jobs:
+  build:
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    steps:
+    - name: Checkout repository
+      uses: actions/checkout@v4
+    - name: Set up QEMU
+      uses: docker/setup-qemu-action@v3
+    - name: Set up Docker Buildx
+      uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v3
+    - name: Build arm64 image and save as tar
+      run: |
+        docker buildx build \
+          --platform linux/arm64 \
+          --load \
+          -t proxlb-image:arm64 \
+          .
+
+        docker save proxlb-image:arm64 -o proxlb_image_arm64.tar
+    - name: Upload Docker image artifact
+      uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
+      with:
+        name: proxlb-image-arm64
+        path: proxlb_image_arm64.tar

.github/workflows/30-pipeline-build-container-multi-arch.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+name: "Build Container Image: Multiarch"
+on: [push]
+jobs:
+  build:
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    steps:
+    - name: Checkout repository
+      uses: actions/checkout@v4
+    - name: Set up QEMU
+      uses: docker/setup-qemu-action@v3
+    - name: Set up Docker Buildx
+      uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v3
+    - name: Build multi-arch image and save as tar
+      run: |
+        docker buildx build \
+          --platform linux/amd64,linux/arm64 \
+          --output type=tar,dest=proxlb_image_multiarch.tar \
+          .
+    - name: Upload Docker image artifact
+      uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
+      with:
+        name: proxlb-image-multiarch
+        path: proxlb_image_multiarch.tar

.gitignore

@@ -1,2 +1,7 @@
-packaging/changelog-fragments-creator/
-dev/
+__pycache__
+*.pyc
+.DS_Store
+build/
+dist/
+*.egg-info/
+proxlb_dev.yaml

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -5,6 +5,96 @@ All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.
 The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/),
 and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html).
 
+
+## [1.1.5] - 2025-07-14
+
+### Added
+
+- Allow custom API ports instead of fixed tcp/8006 (@gyptazy). [#260]
+
+
+## [1.1.4] - 2025-06-27
+
+### Added
+
+- Allow pinning of guests to a group of nodes (@gyptazy). [#245]
+
+### Fixed
+
+- Modified log levels to make output lighter at INFO level (@pmarasse) [#255]
+- Fixed an issue where balancing was performed in combination of deactivated balancing and dry-run mode (@gyptazy). [#248]
+
+
+## [1.1.3] - 2025-06-19
+
+### Added
+
+- Add relaod (SIGHUP) function to ProxLB to reload the configuration (by @gyptazy). [#189]
+- Add optional wait time parameter to delay execution until the service takes action (by @gyptazy). [#239]
+- Make the amount of parallel migrations configurable (by @gyptazy). [#241]
+
+### Changed
+
+- Use the average CPU consumption of a guest within the last 60 minutes instead of the current CPU usage (by @philslab-ninja & @gyptazy). [#94]
+
+### Fixed
+
+- Align maintenance mode with Proxmox HA maintenance mode (by @gyptazy). [#232]
+
+
+## [1.1.2] - 2025-05-13
+
+### Added
+
+- Add a configurable retry mechanism when connecting to the Proxmox API (by @gyptazy) [#157]
+- Add 1-to-1 relationships between guest and hypervisor node to ping a guest on a node (by @gyptazy) [#218]
+
+### Fixed
+
+- Force type cast cpu count of guests to int for some corner cases where a str got returned (by @gyptazy). [#222]
+- Fix systemd unit file to run after network on non PVE nodes (by @robertdahlem) [#137]
+
+
+## [1.1.1] - 2025-04-20
+
+### Added
+
+- Providing the API upstream error message when migration fails in debug mode (by @gyptazy) [#205]
+
+### Changed
+
+- Change the default behaviour of the daemon mode to active [#176]
+- Change the default banalcing mode to used instead of assigned [#180]
+
+### Fixed
+
+- Set cpu_used to the cpu usage, which is a percent, times the total number of cores to get a number where guest cpu_used can be added to nodes cpu_used and be meaningful (by @glitchvern) [#195]
+- Fix tag evluation for VMs for being ignored for further balancing [#163]
+- Honor the value when balancing should not be performed and stop balancing [#174]
+- allow the use of minutes instead of hours and only accept hours or minutes in the format (by @glitchvern) [#187]
+- Remove hard coded memory usage from lowest usage node and use method and mode specified in configuration instead (by @glitchvern) [#197]
+- Fix the guest type relationship in the logs when a migration job failed (by @gyptazy) [#204]
+- Requery a guest if that running guest reports 0 cpu usage (by @glitchvern) [#200]
+- Fix Python path for Docker entrypoint (by @crandler) [#170]
+- Improve logging verbosity of messages that had a wrong servity [#165]
+
+
+## [1.1.0] - 2025-04-01
+
+### Fixed
+
+- Refactored code base for ProxLB [#114]
+- Switched to `pycodestyle` for linting [#114]
+- Package building will be done within GitHub actions pipeline [#114]
+- ProxLB now only returns a warning when no guests for further balancing are not present (instead of quitting) [132#]
+- All nodes (according to the free resources) will be used now [#130]
+- Fixed logging outputs where highest/lowest were mixed-up [#129]
+- Stop balancing when movement would get worste (new force param to enfoce for affinity rules) [#128]
+- Added requested documentation regarding Proxmox HA groups [#127]
+- Rewrite of the whole affinity/anti-affinity rules evaluation and placement [#123]
+- Fixed the `ignore` parameter for nodes where the node and guests on the node will be untouched [#102]
+
+
 ## [1.0.6] - 2024-12-24
 
 ### Fixed
@@ -12,26 +102,27 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 - Fix maintenance mode when using cli arg and config mode by using the merged list (by @CartCaved). [#119]
 - Fix that a scheduler time definition of 1 (int) gets wrongly interpreted as a bool (by @gyptazy). [#115]
 
+
 ## [1.0.5] - 2024-10-30
 
 ### Changed
 
-- Change docs to make bool usage in configs more clear. [#104]
+- Change docs to make bool usage in configs more clear (by @gyptazy). [#104]
 
 ### Fixed
 
+- Fix node (and its objects) evaluation when not reachable, e.g., maintenance (by @gyptazy). [#107]
 - Fix migration from local disks (by @greenlogles). [#113]
-- Fix allowed values (add DEBUG, WARNING) for log verbosity. [#98]
-- Fix node (and its objects) evaluation when not reachable (e.g., maintenance). [#107]
 - Fix evaluation of maintenance mode where comparing list & string resulted in a crash (by @glitchvern). [#106]
+- Fix allowed values (add DEBUG, WARNING) for log verbosity (by @gyptazy). [#98]
 
 
 ## [1.0.4] - 2024-10-11
 
 ### Added
 
-- Add feature to make API timeout configureable. [#91]
 - Add maintenance mode to evacuate a node and move workloads for other nodes in the cluster. [#58]
+- Add feature to make API timeout configureable. [#91]
 - Add version output cli arg. [#89]
 
 ### Changed
@@ -49,27 +140,27 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 
 ### Added
 
-- Add storage balancing function. [#51]
+- Add cli arg `-b` to return the next best node for next VM/CT placement. [#8]
 - Add a convert function to cast all bool alike options from configparser to bools. [#53]
 - Add a config parser options for future features. [#53]
 - Add a config versio schema that must be supported by ProxLB. [#53]
-- Add doc how to add dedicated user for authentication. (by @Dulux-Oz)
 - Add feature to allow the API hosts being provided as a comma separated list. [#60]
-- Add cli arg `-b` to return the next best node for next VM/CT placement. [#8]
+- Add doc how to add dedicated user for authentication. (by @Dulux-Oz)
+- Add storage balancing function. [#51]
 
 ### Changed
 
-- Improve the underlying code base for future implementations. [#53]
 - Provide a more reasonable output when HA services are not active in a Proxmox cluster. [#68]
+- Improve the underlying code base for future implementations. [#53]
 
 ### Fixed
 
-- Fixed `master_only` function by inverting the condition.
-- Improved the overall validation and error handling. [#64]
-- Fix bug in the `proxlb.conf` in the vm_balancing section.
 - Fix anti-affinity rules not evaluating a new and different node. [#67]
+- Fixed `master_only` function by inverting the condition.
 - Fix documentation for the master_only parameter placed in the wrong config section. [#74]
+- Fix bug in the `proxlb.conf` in the vm_balancing section.
 - Fix handling of unset `ignore_nodes` and `ignore_vms` resulted in an attribute error. [#71]
+- Improved the overall validation and error handling. [#64]
 
 
 ## [1.0.2] - 2024-08-13
@@ -92,16 +183,16 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 
 ### Added
 
-- Add option_mode to rebalance by node's free resources in percent (instead of bytes). [#29]
-- Add LXC/Container integration. [#27]
-- Add exclude grouping feature to rebalance VMs from being located together to new nodes. [#4]
-- Add dry-run support to see what kind of rebalancing would be done. [#6]
-- Add Docker/Podman support. [#10 by @daanbosch]
-- Add feature to prevent VMs from being relocated by defining a wildcard pattern. [#7]
 - Add feature to prevent VMs from being relocated by defining the 'plb_ignore_vm' tag. [#7]
-- Add include grouping feature to rebalance VMs bundled to new nodes. [#3]
+- Add feature to prevent VMs from being relocated by defining a wildcard pattern. [#7]
+- Add Docker/Podman support. [#10 by @daanbosch]
 - Add option to rebalance by assigned VM resources to avoid overprovisioning. [#16]
 - Add feature to make log verbosity configurable [#17].
+- Add dry-run support to see what kind of rebalancing would be done. [#6]
+- Add LXC/Container integration. [#27]
+- Add exclude grouping feature to rebalance VMs from being located together to new nodes. [#4]
+- Add include grouping feature to rebalance VMs bundled to new nodes. [#3]
+- Add option_mode to rebalance by node's free resources in percent (instead of bytes). [#29]
 
 ### Changed
 

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -116,6 +116,6 @@ By participating in this project, you agree to abide by our [Code of Conduct](CO
 
 ## Getting Help
 
-If you need help or have any questions, feel free to reach out by creating an issue or by joining our [discussion forum](https://github.com/gyptazy/proxlb/discussions). You can also refer to our [documentation](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/tree/main/docs) for more information about the project or join our [chat room](https://matrix.to/#/#proxlb:gyptazy.ch) in Matrix.
+If you need help or have any questions, feel free to reach out by creating an issue or by joining our [discussion forum](https://github.com/gyptazy/proxlb/discussions). You can also refer to our [documentation](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/tree/main/docs) for more information about the project or join our [chat room](https://matrix.to/#/#proxlb:gyptazy.com) in Matrix.
 
-Thank you for contributing to ProxLB! Together, we can enhance the efficiency and performance of Proxmox clusters.
+Thank you for contributing to ProxLB! Together, we can enhance the efficiency and performance of Proxmox clusters.

Dockerfile

@@ -1,11 +1,16 @@
-# Use the official Python 3.12 image
-FROM python:3.12
+# Use the latest Alpine image
+FROM alpine:latest
 
 # Labels
-LABEL maintainer="gyptazy@gyptazy.ch"
-LABEL org.label-schema.schema-version="0.9"
-LABEL org.label-schema.description="ProxLB - Rebalance VM workloads across nodes in a Proxmox cluster."
-LABEL org.label-schema.url="https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB"
+LABEL maintainer="gyptazy@gyptazy.com"
+LABEL org.label-schema.name="ProxLB"
+LABEL org.label-schema.description="ProxLB - An advanced load balancer for Proxmox clusters."
+LABEL org.label-schema.vendor="gyptazy"
+LABEL org.label-schema.url="https://proxlb.de"
+LABEL org.label-schema.vcs-url="https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB"
+
+# Install Python3
+RUN apk add --no-cache python3 py3-pip
 
 # Create a directory for the app
 WORKDIR /app
@@ -16,7 +21,8 @@ COPY proxlb /app/proxlb
 # Copy requirements to the container
 COPY requirements.txt /app/requirements.txt
 
-RUN pip install -r /app/requirements.txt
+# Install dependencies in the virtual environment
+RUN pip install --break-system-packages -r /app/requirements.txt
 
 # Set the entry point to use the virtual environment's python
-ENTRYPOINT ["python3", "/app/proxlb"]
+ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/bin/python3", "/app/proxlb/main.py"]

LICENSE

@@ -671,4 +671,4 @@ into proprietary programs.  If your program is a subroutine library, you
 may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with
 the library.  If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General
 Public License instead of this License.  But first, please read
-<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html>.
+<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html>.

README.md

@@ -4,352 +4,117 @@
 
 <p float="center"><img src="https://img.shields.io/github/license/gyptazy/ProxLB"/><img src="https://img.shields.io/github/contributors/gyptazy/ProxLB"/><img src="https://img.shields.io/github/last-commit/gyptazy/ProxLB/main"/><img src="https://img.shields.io/github/issues-raw/gyptazy/ProxLB"/><img src="https://img.shields.io/github/issues-pr/gyptazy/ProxLB"/></p>
 
-
 ## Table of Contents
-- [ProxLB - (Re)Balance VM Workloads in Proxmox Clusters](#proxlb---rebalance-vm-workloads-in-proxmox-clusters)
-  - [Table of Contents](#table-of-contents)
-  - [Introduction](#introduction)
-    - [Video of Migration](#video-of-migration)
-  - [Features](#features)
-  - [How does it work?](#how-does-it-work)
-  - [Usage](#usage)
-    - [Dependencies](#dependencies)
-    - [Options](#options)
-      - [Notes](#notes)
-    - [Parameters](#parameters)
-    - [Balancing](#balancing)
-      - [General](#general)
-      - [By Used Memory of VMs/CTs](#by-used-memory-of-vmscts)
-      - [By Assigned Memory of VMs/CTs](#by-assigned-memory-of-vmscts)
-      - [Storage Balancing](#storage-balancing)
-    - [Affinity Rules / Grouping Relationships](#affinity-rules--grouping-relationships)
-      - [Affinity (Stay Together)](#affinity-stay-together)
-      - [Anti-Affinity (Keep Apart)](#anti-affinity-keep-apart)
-      - [Ignore VMs (Tag Style)](#ignore-vms-tag-style)
-    - [Systemd](#systemd)
-    - [Manual](#manual)
-    - [Proxmox GUI Integration](#proxmox-gui-integration)
-    - [Quick Start](#quick-start)
-    - [Container Quick Start (Docker/Podman)](#container-quick-start-dockerpodman)
-    - [Logging](#logging)
-  - [Motivation](#motivation)
-  - [References](#references)
-  - [Downloads](#downloads)
-    - [Packages](#packages)
-    - [Repository](#repository)
-      - [Stable Releases](#stable-releases)
-      - [Beta/Testing Releases](#betatesting-releases)
-    - [Container Images (Docker/Podman)](#container-images-dockerpodman)
-  - [Misc](#misc)
-    - [Bugs](#bugs)
-    - [Contributing](#contributing)
-    - [Documentation](#documentation)
-    - [Support](#support)
-    - [Author(s)](#authors)
+1. [Introduction](#introduction)
+2. [Features](#features)
+3. [How does it work?](#how-does-it-work)
+4. [Installation](#installation)
+   1. [Requirements / Dependencies](#requirements--dependencies)
+   2. [Debian Package](#debian-package)
+   4. [Container / Docker](#container--docker)
+   5. [Source](#source)
+5. [Usage / Configuration](#usage--configuration)
+   1. [GUI Integration](#gui-integration)
+   2. [Proxmox HA Integration](#proxmox-ha-integration)
+   3. [Options](#options)
+6. [Affinity & Anti-Affinity Rules](#affinity--anti-affinity-rules)
+   1. [Affinity Rules](#affinity-rules)
+   2. [Anti-Affinity Rules](#anti-affinity-rules)
+   3. [Ignore VMs](#ignore-vms)
+   4. [Pin VMs to Hypervisor Nodes](#pin-vms-to-hypervisor-nodes)
+7. [Maintenance](#maintenance)
+8. [Misc](#misc)
+   1. [Bugs](#bugs)
+   2. [Contributing](#contributing)
+   3. [Documentation](#documentation)
+   4. [Support](#support)
+9. [Author(s)](#authors)
+
 
 ## Introduction
-`ProxLB` (PLB) is an advanced tool designed to enhance the efficiency and performance of Proxmox clusters by optimizing the distribution of virtual machines (VMs) or Containers (CTs) across the cluster nodes by using the Proxmox API. ProxLB meticulously gathers and analyzes a comprehensive set of resource metrics from both the cluster nodes and the running VMs. These metrics include CPU usage, memory consumption, and disk utilization, specifically focusing on local disk resources.
+ProxLB is an advanced load balancing solution specifically designed for Proxmox clusters, addressing the absence of a Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) that is familiar to VMware users. As a third-party solution, ProxLB enhances the management and efficiency of Proxmox clusters by intelligently distributing workloads across available nodes. Workloads can be balanced by different times like the guest's memory, CPU or disk usage or their assignment to avoid overprovisioning and ensuring resources.
 
-PLB collects resource usage data from each node in the Proxmox cluster, including CPU, (local) disk and memory utilization. Additionally, it gathers resource usage statistics from all running VMs, ensuring a granular understanding of the cluster's workload distribution.
+One of the key advantages of ProxLB is that it is fully open-source and free, making it accessible for anyone to use, modify, and contribute to. This ensures transparency and fosters community-driven improvements. ProxLB supports filtering and ignoring specific nodes and guests through configuration files and API calls, providing administrators with the flexibility to tailor the load balancing behavior to their specific needs.
 
-Intelligent rebalancing is a key feature of ProxLB where it re-balances VMs based on their memory, disk or CPU usage, ensuring that no node is overburdened while others remain underutilized. The rebalancing capabilities of PLB significantly enhance cluster performance and reliability. By ensuring that resources are evenly distributed, PLB helps prevent any single node from becoming a performance bottleneck, improving the reliability and stability of the cluster. Efficient rebalancing leads to better utilization of available resources, potentially reducing the need for additional hardware investments and lowering operational costs.
+A standout feature of ProxLB is its maintenance mode. When enabled, all guest workloads are automatically moved to other nodes within the cluster, ensuring that a node can be safely updated, rebooted, or undergo hardware maintenance without disrupting the overall cluster operation. Additionally, ProxLB supports both affinity and anti-affinity rules, allowing operators to group multiple guests to run together on the same node or ensure that certain guests do not run on the same node, depending on the cluster's node count. This feature is crucial for optimizing performance and maintaining high availability.
 
-Automated rebalancing reduces the need for manual actions, allowing operators to focus on other critical tasks, thereby increasing operational efficiency.
+ProxLB can also return the best next node for guest placement, which can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines using tools like Ansible or Terraform. This capability streamlines the deployment process and ensures efficient resource utilization. Furthermore, ProxLB leverages the Proxmox API, including the entire ACL (Access Control List) system, for secure and efficient operation. Unlike some solutions, it does not require SSH access, enhancing security and simplifying configuration.
+
+Overall, ProxLB significantly enhances resource management by intelligently distributing workloads, reducing downtime through its maintenance mode, and providing improved flexibility with affinity and anti-affinity rules. Its seamless integration with CI/CD tools and reliance on the Proxmox API make it a robust and secure solution for optimizing Proxmox cluster performance.
 
 ### Video of Migration
 <img src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/proxlb-rebalancing-demo.gif"/>
 
 ## Features
+ProxLB's key features are by enabling automatic rebalancing of VMs and CTs across a Proxmox cluster based on memory, CPU, and local disk usage while identifying optimal nodes for automation. It supports maintenance mode, affinity rules, and seamless Proxmox API integration with ACL support, offering flexible usage as a one-time operation, a daemon, or through the Proxmox Web GUI.
+
+**Features**
 * Rebalance VMs/CTs in the cluster by:
   * Memory
   * Disk (only local storage)
   * CPU
-* Rebalance Storage in the cluster
-  * Rebalance VMs/CTs disks to other storage pools
-  * Rebalance by used storage
-* Get best Node for new VM/CT placement in cluster
-* Performing
-  * Periodically
-  * One-shot solution
-* Types
-  * Rebalance only VMs
-  * Rebalance only CTs
-  * Rebalance all (VMs and CTs)
-  * Rebalance VM/CT disks (Storage)
-* Filter
-  * Exclude nodes
-  * Exclude virtual machines
-* Grouping
-  * Include groups (VMs that are rebalanced to nodes together)
-  * Exclude groups (VMs that must run on different nodes)
-  * Ignore groups (VMs that should be untouched)
-* Dry-run support
-  * Human readable output in CLI
-  * JSON output for further parsing
-* Migrate VM workloads away (e.g. maintenance preparation)
+* Get best nodes for further automation
+* Supported Guest Types
+  * VMs
+  * CTs
+* Maintenance Mode
+  * Set node(s) into maintenance
+  * Move all workloads to different nodes
+* Affinity / Anti-Affinity Rules
 * Fully based on Proxmox API
+  * Fully integrated into the Proxmox ACL
+  * No SSH required
 * Usage
-  * One-Shot (one-shot)
-  * Periodically (daemon)
-  * Proxmox Web GUI Integration (optional)
+  * One-Time
+  * Daemon
+  * Proxmox Web GUI Integration
 
 ## How does it work?
 ProxLB is a load-balancing system designed to optimize the distribution of virtual machines (VMs) and containers (CTs) across a cluster. It works by first gathering resource usage metrics from all nodes in the cluster through the Proxmox API. This includes detailed resource metrics for each VM and CT on every node. ProxLB then evaluates the difference between the maximum and minimum resource usage of the nodes, referred to as "Balanciness." If this difference exceeds a predefined threshold (which is configurable), the system initiates the rebalancing process.
 
 Before starting any migrations, ProxLB validates that rebalancing actions are necessary and beneficial. Depending on the selected balancing mode — such as CPU, memory, or disk — it creates a balancing matrix. This matrix sorts the VMs by their maximum used or assigned resources, identifying the VM with the highest usage. ProxLB then places this VM on the node with the most free resources in the selected balancing type. This process runs recursively until the operator-defined Balanciness is achieved. Balancing can be defined for the used or max. assigned resources of VMs/CTs.
 
-## Usage
-Running PLB is easy and it runs almost everywhere since it just depends on `Python3` and the `proxmoxer` library. Therefore, it can directly run on a Proxmox node, dedicated systems like Debian, RedHat, or even FreeBSD, as long as the API is reachable by the client running PLB.
+## Installation
 
-### Dependencies
-* Python3
-* proxmoxer (Python module)
+### Requirements / Dependencies
+* Python3.x
+* proxmoxer
+* requests
+* urllib3
+* pyyaml
 
-### Options
-The following options can be set in the `proxlb.conf` file:
-
-| Section | Option | Example | Description |
-|------|:------:|:------:|:------:|
-| `proxmox` | api_host | hypervisor01.gyptazy.com | Host or IP address (or comma separated list) of the remote Proxmox API. |
-| | api_user | root@pam | Username for the API. |
-| | api_pass | FooBar | Password for the API. |
-| | verify_ssl | 1 | Validate SSL certificates (1) or ignore (0). (default: 1, type: bool) |
-| | timeout | 10 | Timeout for the Proxmox API in sec. (default: 10) |
-| `vm_balancing` | enable | 1 | Enables VM/CT balancing. |
-| | method | memory | Defines the balancing method (default: memory) where you can use `memory`, `disk` or `cpu`. |
-| | mode | used | Rebalance by `used` resources (efficiency) or `assigned` (avoid overprovisioning) resources. (default: used)|
-| | mode_option | byte | Rebalance by node's resources in `bytes` or `percent`. (default: bytes) |
-| | type | vm | Rebalance only `vm` (virtual machines), `ct` (containers) or `all` (virtual machines & containers). (default: vm)|
-| | balanciness | 10 | Value of the percentage of lowest and highest resource consumption on nodes may differ before rebalancing. (default: 10) |
-| | parallel_migrations | 1 | Defines if migrations should be done parallely or sequentially. (default: 1, type: bool) |
-| | maintenance_nodes | dummynode03,dummynode04 | Defines a comma separated list of nodes to set them into maintenance mode and move VMs/CTs to other nodes. |
-| | ignore_nodes | dummynode01,dummynode02,test* | Defines a comma separated list of nodes to exclude. |
-| | ignore_vms | testvm01,testvm02 | Defines a comma separated list of VMs to exclude. (`*` as suffix wildcard or tags are also supported) |
-| `storage_balancing` | enable | 0 | Enables storage balancing. |
-| | balanciness | 10 | Value of the percentage of lowest and highest storage consumption may differ before rebalancing. (default: 10) |
-| | parallel_migrations | 1 | Defines if migrations should be done parallely or sequentially. (default: 1, type: bool) |
-| `update_service` | enable | 0 | Enables the automated update service (rolling updates). (default: 0, type: bool) |
-| `api` | enable | 0 | Enables the ProxLB API. |
-| `service`| daemon | 1 | Run as a daemon (1) or one-shot (0). (default: 1, type: bool) |
-| | schedule | 24 | Hours to rebalance in hours. (default: 24) |
-| | master_only | 0 | Defines is this should only be performed (1) on the cluster master node or not (0). (default: 0, type: bool) |
-| | log_verbosity | INFO | Defines the log level (default: CRITICAL) where you can use `DEBUG`, `INFO`, `WARNING` or `CRITICAL` |
-| | config_version | 3 | Defines the current config version schema for ProxLB |
-
-An example of the configuration file looks like:
+The dependencies can simply be installed with `pip` by running the following command:
 ```
-[proxmox]
-api_host: hypervisor01.gyptazy.com
-api_user: root@pam
-api_pass: FooBar
-verify_ssl: 1
-timeout: 10
-[vm_balancing]
-enable: 1
-method: memory
-mode: used
-type: vm
-# Balanciness defines how much difference may be
-# between the lowest & highest resource consumption
-# of nodes before rebalancing will be done.
-# Examples:
-# Rebalancing:     node01: 41% memory consumption :: node02: 52% consumption
-# No rebalancing:  node01: 43% memory consumption :: node02: 50% consumption
-balanciness: 10
-# Enable parallel migrations. If set to 0 it will wait for completed migrations
-# before starting next migration.
-parallel_migrations: 1
-maintenance_nodes: dummynode03,dummynode04
-ignore_nodes: dummynode01,dummynode02
-ignore_vms: testvm01,testvm02
-[storage_balancing]
-enable: 0
-[update_service]
-enable: 0
-[api]
-enable: 0
-[service]
-# The master_only option might be useful if running ProxLB on all nodes in a cluster
-# but only a single one should do the balancing. The master node is obtained from the Proxmox
-# HA status.
-master_only: 0
-daemon: 1
-config_version: 3
+pip install -r requirements.txt
 ```
 
-#### Notes
-* If running ProxLB on more than one Proxmox node you can set `api_host` to a comma-separated list of each node's IP address or hostname. (Example: `api_host: node01.gyptazy.com,node02.gyptazy.com,node03.gyptazy.com`)
-* The `verify_ssl` parameter can switch between the mode to verify trusted remote certificates. Keep in mind, that even local ones are **not** trusted by default and need to be imported to the truststore.
-* Even when using only the `vm_balancing` mode, ensure to have the other sections listed in your config:
-```
-[storage_balancing]
-enable: 0
-[update_service]
-enable: 0
-[api]
-enable: 0
-```
+*Note: Distribution packages, such like the provided `.deb` package will automatically resolve and install all required dependencies by using already packaged version from the distribution's repository. By using the Docker (container) image or Debian packages, you do not need to take any care of the requirements listed here.*
 
-### Parameters
-The following options and parameters are currently supported:
+### Debian Package
+ProxLB is a powerful and flexible load balancer designed to work across various architectures, including `amd64`, `arm64`, `rv64` and many other ones that support Python. It runs independently of the underlying hardware, making it a versatile choice for different environments. This chapter covers the step-by-step process to install ProxLB on Debian-based systems, including Debian clones like Ubuntu.
 
-| Option | Long Option | Description | Default |
-|------|:------:|------:|------:|
-| -c | --config | Path to a config file. | /etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf (default) |
-| -d | --dry-run | Performs a dry-run without doing any actions. | Unset |
-| -j | --json | Returns a JSON of the VM movement. | Unset |
-| -b | --best-node | Returns the best next node for a VM/CT placement (useful for further usage with Terraform/Ansible). | Unset |
-| -m | --maintenance | Sets node(s) to maintenance mode & moves workloads away. | Unset |
-| -v | --version | Returns the ProxLB version on stdout. | Unset |
-
-### Balancing
-#### General
-In general, virtual machines (VMs), containers (CTs) can be rebalanced and moved around nodes or shared storage (storage balancing) in the cluster. Often, this also works without downtime without any further downtimes. However, this does **not** work with containers. LXC based containers will be shutdown, copied and started on the new node. Also to note, live migrations can work fluently without any issues but there are still several things to be considered. This is out of scope for ProxLB and applies in general to Proxmox and your cluster setup. You can find more details about this here: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migrate_to_Proxmox_VE.
-
-#### By Used Memory of VMs/CTs
-By continuously monitoring the current resource usage of VMs, ProxLB intelligently reallocates workloads to prevent any single node from becoming overloaded. This approach ensures that resources are balanced efficiently, providing consistent and optimal performance across the entire cluster at all times. To activate this balancing mode, simply activate the following option in your ProxLB configuration:
-```
-mode: used
-```
-
-Afterwards, restart the service (if running in daemon mode) to activate this rebalancing mode.
-
-#### By Assigned Memory of VMs/CTs
-By ensuring that resources are always available for each VM, ProxLB prevents over-provisioning and maintains a balanced load across all nodes. This guarantees that users have consistent access to the resources they need. However, if the total assigned resources exceed the combined capacity of the cluster, ProxLB will issue a warning, indicating potential over-provisioning despite its best efforts to balance the load.  To activate this balancing mode, simply activate the following option in your ProxLB configuration:
-```
-mode: assigned
-```
-
-Afterwards, restart the service (if running in daemon mode) to activate this rebalancing mode.
-
-#### Storage Balancing
-Starting with ProxLB 1.0.3, ProxLB also supports the balancing of underlying shared storage. In this case, all attached disks (`rootfs` in a context of a CT) of a VM or CT are being fetched and evaluated. If a VM has multiple disks attached, the disks can also be distributed over different storages. As a result, only shared storage is supported. Non shared storage would require to move the whole VM including all attached disks to the parent's node local storage.
-
-Limitations:
-* Only shared storage
-* Only supported for the following VM disk types:
-    * ide (only disks, not CD)
-    * nvme
-    * scsi
-    * virtio
-    * sata
-    * rootfs (Container)
-
-*Note: Storage balancing is currently in beta and should be used carefully.*
-
-### Affinity Rules / Grouping Relationships
-#### Affinity (Stay Together)
-<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/plb-rebalancing-include-balance-group.jpg"/> Access the Proxmox Web UI by opening your web browser and navigating to your Proxmox VE web interface, then log in with your credentials. Navigate to the VM you want to tag by selecting it from the left-hand navigation panel. Click on the "Options" tab to view the VM's options, then select "Edit" or "Add" (depending on whether you are editing an existing tag or adding a new one). In the tag field, enter plb_include_ followed by your unique identifier, for example, plb_include_group1. Save the changes to apply the tag to the VM. Repeat these steps for each VM that should be included in the group.
-
-#### Anti-Affinity (Keep Apart)
-<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/plb-rebalancing-exclude-balance-group.jpg"/> Access the Proxmox Web UI by opening your web browser and navigating to your Proxmox VE web interface, then log in with your credentials. Navigate to the VM you want to tag by selecting it from the left-hand navigation panel. Click on the "Options" tab to view the VM's options, then select "Edit" or "Add" (depending on whether you are editing an existing tag or adding a new one). In the tag field, enter plb_exclude_ followed by your unique identifier, for example, plb_exclude_critical. Save the changes to apply the tag to the VM. Repeat these steps for each VM that should be excluded from being on the same node.
-
-#### Ignore VMs (Tag Style)
-<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/plb-rebalancing-ignore-vm.jpg"/>  In Proxmox, you can ensure that certain VMs are ignored during the rebalancing process by setting a specific tag within the Proxmox Web UI, rather than solely relying on configurations in the ProxLB config file. This can be achieved by adding the tag 'plb_ignore_vm' to the VM. Once this tag is applied, the VM will be excluded from any further rebalancing operations, simplifying the management process.
-
-### Systemd
-When installing a Linux distribution (such as .deb or .rpm) file, this will be shipped with a systemd unit file. The default configuration file will be sourced from `/etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf`.
-
-| Unit Name | Options |
-|------|:------:|
-| proxlb | start, stop, status, restart |
-
-### Manual
-A manual installation is possible and also supports BSD based systems. Proxmox Rebalancing Service relies on mainly two important files:
-* proxlb (Python Executable)
-* proxlb.conf (Config file)
-
-The executable must be able to read the config file, if no dedicated config file is given by the `-c` argument, PLB tries to read it from `/etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf`.
-
-### Proxmox GUI Integration
-<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/proxlb-GUI-integration.jpg"/> PLB can also be directly be used from the Proxmox Web UI by installing the optional package `pve-proxmoxlb-service-ui` package which has a dependency on the `proxlb` package. For the Web UI integration, it requires to be installed (in addition) on the nodes on the cluster. Afterwards, a new menu item is present in the HA chapter called `Rebalancing`. This chapter provides two possibilities:
-* Rebalancing VM workloads
-* Migrate VM workloads away from a defined node (e.g. maintenance preparation)
-
-### Quick Start
-The easiest way to get started is by using the ready-to-use packages that I provide on my CDN and to run it on a Linux Debian based system. This can also be one of the Proxmox nodes itself.
-
-```
-wget https://cdn.gyptazy.com/files/os/debian/proxlb/proxlb_1.0.6_amd64.deb
-dpkg -i proxlb_1.0.6_amd64.deb
-# Adjust your config
-vi /etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf
-systemctl restart proxlb
-systemctl status proxlb
-```
-
-### Container Quick Start (Docker/Podman)
-Creating a container image of ProxLB is straightforward using the provided Dockerfile. The Dockerfile simplifies the process by automating the setup and configuration required to get ProxLB running in a container. Simply follow the steps in the Dockerfile to build the image, ensuring all dependencies and configurations are correctly applied. For those looking for an even quicker setup, a ready-to-use ProxLB container image is also available, eliminating the need for manual building and allowing for immediate deployment.
+#### Quick-Start
+You can simply use this snippet to install the repository and to install ProxLB on your system.
 
 ```bash
-git clone https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB.git
-cd ProxLB
-docker build -t proxlb .
+echo "deb https://repo.gyptazy.com/stable /" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/proxlb.list
+wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxlb.asc https://repo.gyptazy.com/repository.gpg
+apt-get update && apt-get -y install proxlb
+cp /etc/proxlb/proxlb_example.yaml /etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml
+# Adjust the config to your needs
+vi /etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml
+systemctl start proxlb
 ```
 
-Afterwards simply adjust the config file to your needs:
-```
-vi /etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf
-```
+Afterwards, ProxLB is running in the background and balances your cluster by your defined balancing method (default: memory).
 
-Finally, start the created container.
-```bash
-docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd)/proxlb.conf:/etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf proxlb
-```
+#### Details
+ProxLB provides two different repositories:
+* https://repo.gyptazy.com/stable (only stable release)
+* https://repo.gyptazy.com/testing (bleeding edge - not recommended)
 
-### Logging
-ProxLB uses the `SystemdHandler` for logging. You can find all your logs in your systemd unit log or in the `journalctl`. In default, ProxLB only logs critical events. However, for further understanding of the balancing it might be useful to change this to `INFO` or `DEBUG` which can simply be done in the [proxlb.conf](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/blob/main/proxlb.conf#L14) file by changing the `log_verbosity` parameter.
-
-Available logging values:
-| Verbosity | Description |
-|------|:------:|
-| DEBUG | This option logs everything and is needed for debugging the code. |
-| INFO | This option provides insides behind the scenes. What/why has been something done and with which values. |
-| WARNING | This option provides only warning messages, which might be a problem in general but not for the application itself. |
-| CRITICAL | This option logs all critical events that will avoid running ProxLB. |
-
-## Motivation
-As a developer managing a cluster of virtual machines for my projects, I often encountered the challenge of resource imbalance. Nodes within the cluster would become unevenly loaded, with some nodes being overburdened while others remained underutilized. This imbalance led to inefficiencies, performance bottlenecks, and increased operational costs. Frustrated by the lack of an adequate solution to address this issue, I decided to develop the ProxLB (PLB) to ensure better resource distribution across my clusters.
-
-My primary motivation for creating PLB stemmed from my work on my BoxyBSD project, where I consistently faced the difficulty of maintaining balanced nodes while running various VM workloads but also on my personal clusters. The absence of an efficient rebalancing mechanism made it challenging to achieve optimal performance and stability. Recognizing the necessity for a tool that could gather and analyze resource metrics from both the cluster nodes and the running VMs, I embarked on developing ProxLB.
-
-PLB meticulously collects detailed resource usage data from each node in a Proxmox cluster, including CPU load, memory usage, and local disk space utilization. It also gathers comprehensive statistics from all running VMs, providing a granular understanding of the workload distribution. With this data, PLB intelligently redistributes VMs based on memory usage, local disk usage, and CPU usage. This ensures that no single node is overburdened, storage resources are evenly distributed, and the computational load is balanced, enhancing overall cluster performance.
-
-As an advocate of the open-source philosophy, I believe in the power of community and collaboration. By sharing solutions like PLB, I aim to contribute to the collective knowledge and tools available to developers facing similar challenges. Open source fosters innovation, transparency, and mutual support, enabling developers to build on each other's work and create better solutions together.
-
-Developing PLB was driven by a desire to solve a real problem I faced in my projects. However, the spirit behind this effort was to provide a valuable resource to the community. By open-sourcing PLB, I hope to help other developers manage their clusters more efficiently, optimize their resource usage, and reduce operational costs. Sharing this solution aligns with the core principles of open source, where the goal is not only to solve individual problems but also to contribute to the broader ecosystem.
-
-## References
-Here you can find some overviews of references for and about the ProxLB (PLB):
-
-| Description | Link |
-|------|:------:|
-| General introduction into ProxLB | https://gyptazy.com/blog/proxlb-rebalancing-vm-workloads-across-nodes-in-proxmox-clusters/ |
-| Howto install and use ProxLB on Debian to rebalance vm workloads in a Proxmox cluster | https://gyptazy.com/howtos/howto-install-and-use-proxlb-to-rebalance-vm-workloads-across-nodes-in-proxmox-clusters/ |
-
-## Downloads
-ProxLB can be obtained in man different ways, depending on which use case you prefer. You can use simply copy the code from GitHub, use created packages for Debian or RedHat based systems, use a Repository to keep ProxLB always up to date or simply use a Container image for Docker/Podman.
-
-### Packages
-Ready to use packages can be found at:
-* https://cdn.gyptazy.com/files/os/debian/proxlb/
-* https://cdn.gyptazy.com/files/os/ubuntu/proxlb/
-* https://cdn.gyptazy.com/files/os/redhat/proxlb/
-
-### Repository
-Debian based systems can also use the repository by adding the following line to their apt sources:
-
-#### Stable Releases
-```
-deb https://repo.gyptazy.com/stable /
-```
-
-#### Beta/Testing Releases
-```
-deb https://repo.gyptazy.com/testing /
-```
-
-The Repository's GPG key can be found at: `https://repo.gyptazy.com/repository.gpg`
+The repository is signed and the GPG key can be found at:
+* https://repo.gyptazy.com/repository.gpg
 
 You can also simply import it by running:
 
@@ -363,11 +128,45 @@ wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxlb.asc https://repo.gyptazy.com/repository.gp
 
 *Note: The defined repositories `repo.gyptazy.com` and `repo.proxlb.de` are the same!*
 
-### Container Images (Docker/Podman)
-Container Images for Podman, Docker etc., can be found at:
+#### Debian Packages (.deb files)
+If you do not want to use the repository you can also find the debian packages as a .deb file on gyptazy's CDN at:
+* https://cdn.gyptazy.com/files/os/debian/proxlb/
+
+Afterwards, you can simply install the package by running:
+```bash
+dpkg -i proxlb_*.deb
+cp /etc/proxlb/proxlb_example.yaml /etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml
+# Adjust the config to your needs
+vi /etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml
+systemctl start proxlb
+```
+
+### Container Images / Docker
+Using the ProxLB container images is straight forward and only requires you to mount the config file.
+
+```bash
+# Pull the image
+docker pull cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:latest
+# Download the config
+wget -O proxlb.yaml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/refs/heads/main/config/proxlb_example.yaml
+# Adjust the config to your needs
+vi proxlb.yaml
+# Start the ProxLB container image with the ProxLB config
+docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd)/proxlb.yaml:/etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml proxlb
+```
+
+*Note: ProxLB container images are officially only available at cr.proxlb.de and cr.gyptazy.com.*
+
+#### Overview of Images
 | Version | Image |
 |------|:------:|
 | latest | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:latest |
+| v1.1.5 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.1.5 |
+| v1.1.4 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.1.4 |
+| v1.1.3 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.1.3 |
+| v1.1.2 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.1.2 |
+| v1.1.1 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.1.1 |
+| v1.1.0 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.1.0 |
 | v1.0.6 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.0.6 |
 | v1.0.5 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.0.5 |
 | v1.0.4 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.0.4 |
@@ -376,6 +175,238 @@ Container Images for Podman, Docker etc., can be found at:
 | v1.0.0 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.0.0 |
 | v0.9.9 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v0.9.9 |
 
+### Source
+ProxLB can also easily be used from the provided sources - for traditional systems but also as a Docker/Podman container image.
+
+#### Traditional System
+Setting up and running ProxLB from the sources is simple and requires just a few commands. Ensure Python 3 and the Python dependencies are installed on your system, then run ProxLB using the following command:
+```bash
+git clone https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB.git
+cd ProxLB
+```
+
+Afterwards simply adjust the config file to your needs:
+```bash
+vi config/proxlb.yaml
+```
+
+Start ProxLB by Python3 on the system:
+```bash
+python3 proxlb/main.py -c config/proxlb.yaml
+```
+
+#### Container Image
+Creating a container image of ProxLB is straightforward using the provided Dockerfile. The Dockerfile simplifies the process by automating the setup and configuration required to get ProxLB running in an Alpine container. Simply follow the steps in the Dockerfile to build the image, ensuring all dependencies and configurations are correctly applied. For those looking for an even quicker setup, a ready-to-use ProxLB container image is also available, eliminating the need for manual building and allowing for immediate deployment.
+
+```bash
+git clone https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB.git
+cd ProxLB
+docker build -t proxlb .
+```
+
+Afterwards simply adjust the config file to your needs:
+```bash
+vi config/proxlb.yaml
+```
+
+Finally, start the created container.
+```bash
+docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd)/proxlb.yaml:/etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml proxlb
+```
+
+## Usage / Configuration
+Running ProxLB is straightforward and versatile, as it only requires `Python3` and the `proxmoxer` library. This means ProxLB can be executed directly on a Proxmox node or on dedicated systems such as Debian, RedHat, or even FreeBSD, provided that the Proxmox API is accessible from the client running ProxLB. ProxLB can also run inside a Container - Docker or LXC - and is simply up to you.
+
+### GUI Integration
+<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/proxlb-GUI-integration.jpg"/> ProxLB can also be accessed through the Proxmox Web UI by installing the optional `pve-proxmoxlb-service-ui` package, which depends on the proxlb package. For full Web UI integration, this package must be installed on all nodes within the cluster. Once installed, a new menu item - `Rebalancing`, appears in the cluster level under the HA section. Once installed, it offers two key functionalities:
+* Rebalancing VM workloads
+* Migrate VM workloads away from a defined node (e.g. maintenance preparation)
+
+**Note:** This package is currently discontinued and will be readded at a later time. See also: [#44: How to install pve-proxmoxlb-service-ui package](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/issues/44).
+
+### Proxmox HA Integration
+Proxmox HA (High Availability) groups are designed to ensure that virtual machines (VMs) remain running within a Proxmox cluster. HA groups define specific rules for where VMs should be started or migrated in case of node failures, ensuring minimal downtime and automatic recovery.
+
+However, when used in conjunction with ProxLB, the built-in load balancer for Proxmox, conflicts can arise. ProxLB operates with its own logic for workload distribution, taking into account affinity and anti-affinity rules. While it effectively balances guest workloads, it may re-shift and redistribute VMs in a way that does not align with HA group constraints, potentially leading to unsuitable placements.
+
+Due to these conflicts, it is currently not recommended to use both HA groups and ProxLB simultaneously. The interaction between the two mechanisms can lead to unexpected behavior, where VMs might not adhere to HA group rules after being moved by ProxLB.
+
+A solution to improve compatibility between HA groups and ProxLB is under evaluation, aiming to ensure that both features can work together without disrupting VM placement strategies.
+
+See also: [#65: Host groups: Honour HA groups](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/issues/65).
+
+### Options
+The following options can be set in the configuration file `proxlb.yaml`:
+
+| Section | Option | Sub Option | Example | Type | Description |
+|---------|:------:|:----------:|:-------:|:----:|:-----------:|
+| `proxmox_api` |  |  |  |  |  |
+|  | hosts |  | ['virt01.example.com', '10.10.10.10', 'fe01::bad:code::cafe', 'virt01.example.com:443', '[fc00::1]', '[fc00::1]:443', 'fc00::1:8006'] | `List` | List of Proxmox nodes. Can be IPv4, IPv6 or mixed. You can specify custom ports. In case of IPv6 without brackets the port is considered after the last colon |
+|  | user |  | root@pam | `Str` | Username for the API. |
+|  | pass |  | FooBar | `Str` | Password for the API. (Recommended: Use API token authorization!) |
+|  | token_id |  | proxlb | `Str` | Token ID of the user for the API. |
+|  | token_secret |  | 430e308f-1337-1337-beef-1337beefcafe | `Str` | Secret of the token ID for the API. |
+|  | ssl_verification |  | True | `Bool` | Validate SSL certificates (1) or ignore (0). [values: `1` (default), `0`] |
+|  | timeout |  | 10 | `Int` | Timeout for the Proxmox API in sec. |
+|  | retries |  | 1 | `Int` | How often a connection attempt to the defined API host should be performed. |
+|  | wait_time |  | 1 | `Int` | How many seconds should be waited before performing another connection attempt to the API host. |
+| `proxmox_cluster` |  |  |  |  |  |
+|  | maintenance_nodes |  | ['virt66.example.com'] | `List` | A list of Proxmox nodes that are defined to be in a maintenance. |
+|  | ignore_nodes |  | [] | `List` | A list of Proxmox nodes that are defined to be ignored. |
+|  | overprovisioning |  | False | `Bool` | Avoids balancing when nodes would become overprovisioned. |
+| `balancing` |  |  |  |  |  |
+|  | enable |  | True | `Bool` | Enables the guest balancing.|
+|  | enforce_affinity |  | True | `Bool` | Enforcing affinity/anti-affinity rules but balancing might become worse. |
+|  | parallel |  | False | `Bool` | If guests should be moved in parallel or sequentially.|
+|  | parallel_jobs |  | 5 | `Int` | The amount if parallel jobs when migrating guests. (default: `5`)|
+|  | live |  | True | `Bool` | If guests should be moved live or shutdown.|
+|  | with_local_disks |  | True | `Bool` | If balancing of guests should include local disks.|
+|  | balance_types |  | ['vm', 'ct'] | `List` | Defined the types of guests that should be honored. [values: `vm`, `ct`]|
+|  | max_job_validation |  | 1800 | `Int` | How long a job validation may take in seconds. (default: 1800) |
+|  | balanciness |  | 10 | `Int` | The maximum delta of resource usage between node with highest and lowest usage. |
+|  | method |  | memory | `Str` | The balancing method that should be used.  [values: `memory` (default), `cpu`, `disk`]|
+|  | mode |  | used | `Str` | The balancing mode that should be used. [values: `used` (default), `assigned`] |
+| `service` |  |  |  |  |  |
+|  | daemon |  | True | `Bool` | If daemon mode should be activated. |
+|  | `schedule` |  |  | `Dict` | Schedule config block for rebalancing. |
+|  |  | interval | 12 | `Int` | How often rebalancing should occur in daemon mode.|
+|  |  | format | hours | `Str` | Sets the time format. [values: `hours` (default), `minutes`]|
+|  | `delay` |  |  | `Dict` | Schedule config block for an optional delay until the service starts. |
+|  |  | enable | False | `Bool` | If a delay time should be validated.|
+|  |  | time | 1 | `Int` | Delay time until the service starts after the initial execution.|
+|  |  | format | hours | `Str` | Sets the time format. [values: `hours` (default), `minutes`]|
+|  | log_level |  | INFO | `Str` | Defines the default log level that should be logged. [values: `INFO` (default), `WARNING`, `CRITICAL`, `DEBUG`] |
+
+
+An example of the configuration file looks like:
+```
+proxmox_api:
+  hosts: ['virt01.example.com', '10.10.10.10', 'fe01::bad:code::cafe']
+  user: root@pam
+  pass: crazyPassw0rd!
+  # API Token method
+  # token_id: proxlb
+  # token_secret: 430e308f-1337-1337-beef-1337beefcafe
+  ssl_verification: True
+  timeout: 10
+  # API Connection retries
+  # retries: 1
+  # wait_time: 1
+
+proxmox_cluster:
+  maintenance_nodes: ['virt66.example.com']
+  ignore_nodes: []
+  overprovisioning: True
+
+balancing:
+  enable: True
+  enforce_affinity: False
+  parallel: False
+  live: True
+  with_local_disks: True
+  balance_types: ['vm', 'ct']
+  max_job_validation: 1800
+  balanciness: 5
+  method: memory
+  mode: used
+
+service:
+  daemon: True
+  schedule:
+    interval: 12
+    format: hours
+  delay:
+    enable: False
+    time: 1
+    format: hours
+  log_level: INFO
+```
+
+### Parameters
+The following options and parameters are currently supported:
+
+| Option | Long Option | Description | Default |
+|------|:------:|------:|------:|
+| -c | --config | Path to a config file. | /etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml (default) |
+| -d | --dry-run | Performs a dry-run without doing any actions. | False |
+| -j | --json | Returns a JSON of the VM movement. | False |
+| -b | --best-node | Returns the best next node for a VM/CT placement (useful for further usage with Terraform/Ansible). | False |
+| -v | --version | Returns the ProxLB version on stdout. | False |
+
+## Affinity & Anti-Affinity Rules
+ProxLB provides an advanced mechanism to define affinity and anti-affinity rules, enabling precise control over virtual machine (VM) placement. These rules help manage resource distribution, improve high availability configurations, and optimize performance within a Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) cluster. By leveraging Proxmox’s integrated access management, ProxLB ensures that users can only define and manage rules for guests they have permission to access.
+
+ProxLB implements affinity and anti-affinity rules through a tag-based system within the Proxmox web interface. Each guest (virtual machine or container) can be assigned specific tags, which then dictate its placement behavior. This method maintains a streamlined and secure approach to managing VM relationships while preserving Proxmox’s inherent permission model.
+
+### Affinity Rules
+<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/proxlb-affinity-rules.jpg"/> Affinity rules are used to group certain VMs together, ensuring that they run on the same host whenever possible. This can be beneficial for workloads requiring low-latency communication, such as clustered databases or application servers that frequently exchange data.
+
+To define an affinity rule which keeps all guests assigned to this tag together on a node, users assign a tag with the prefix `plb_affinity_$TAG`:
+
+#### Example for Screenshot
+```
+plb_affinity_talos
+```
+
+As a result, ProxLB will attempt to place all VMs with the `plb_affinity_web` tag on the same host (see also the attached screenshot with the same node).
+
+### Anti-Affinity Rules
+<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/proxlb-anti-affinity-rules.jpg"/> Conversely, anti-affinity rules ensure that designated VMs do not run on the same physical host. This is particularly useful for high-availability setups, where redundancy is crucial. Ensuring that critical services are distributed across multiple hosts reduces the risk of a single point of failure.
+
+To define an anti-affinity rule that ensures to not move systems within this group to the same node, users assign a tag with the prefix:
+
+#### Example for Screenshot
+```
+plb_anti_affinity_ntp
+```
+
+As a result, ProxLB will try to place the VMs with the `plb_anti_affinity_ntp` tag on different hosts (see also the attached screenshot with the different nodes).
+
+**Note:** While this ensures that ProxLB tries distribute these VMs across different physical hosts within the Proxmox cluster this may not always work. If you have more guests attached to the group than nodes in the cluster, we still need to run them anywhere. If this case occurs, the next one with the most free resources will be selected.
+
+### Ignore VMs
+<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/proxlb-ignore-vm-movement.jpg"/> Guests, such as VMs or CTs, can also be completely ignored. This means, they won't be affected by any migration (even when (anti-)affinity rules are enforced). To ensure a proper resource evaluation, these guests are still collected and evaluated but simply skipped for balancing actions. Another thing is the implementation. While ProxLB might have a very restricted configuration file including the file permissions, this file is only read- and writeable by the Proxmox administrators. However, we might have user and groups who want to define on their own that their systems shouldn't be moved. Therefore, these users can simpy set a specific tag to the guest object - just like the (anti)affinity rules.
+
+To define a guest to be ignored from the balancing, users assign a tag with the prefix `plb_ignore_$TAG`:
+
+#### Example for Screenshot
+```
+plb_ignore_dev
+```
+
+As a result, ProxLB will not migrate this guest with the `plb_ignore_dev` tag to any other node.
+
+**Note:** Ignored guests are really ignored. Even by enforcing affinity rules this guest will be ignored.
+
+### Pin VMs to Specific Hypervisor Nodes
+<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/proxlb-tag-node-pinning.jpg"/> Guests, such as VMs or CTs, can also be pinned to specific (and multiple) nodes in the cluster. This might be usefull when running applications with some special licensing requirements that are only fulfilled on certain nodes. It might also be interesting, when some physical hardware is attached to a node, that is not available in general within the cluster.
+
+To pin a guest to a specific cluster node, users assign a tag with the prefix `plb_pin_$nodename` to the desired guest:
+
+#### Example for Screenshot
+```
+plb_pin_node03
+```
+
+As a result, ProxLB will pin the guest `dev-vm01` to the node `virt03`.
+
+You can also repeat this step multiple times for different node names to create a potential group of allowed hosts where a the guest may be served on. In this case, ProxLB takes the node with the lowest used resources according to the defined balancing values from this group.
+
+**Note:** The given node names from the tag are validated. This means, ProxLB validated if the given node name is really part of the cluster. In case of a wrongly defined or unavailable node name it continous to use the regular processes to make sure the guest keeps running.
+
+## Maintenance
+<img src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/proxlb-rebalancing-demo.gif"/>
+
+The `maintenance_nodes` option allows operators to designate one or more Proxmox nodes for maintenance mode. When a node is set to maintenance, no new guest workloads will be assigned to it, and all existing workloads will be migrated to other available nodes within the cluster. This process ensures that (anti)-affinity rules and resource availability are respected, preventing disruptions while maintaining optimal performance across the infrastructure.
+
+### Adding / Removing Nodes from Maintenance
+Within the section `proxmox_cluster` you can define the key `maintenance_nodes` as a list object. Simply add/remove one or more nodes with their equal name in the cluster and restart the daemon.
+```
+proxmox_cluster:
+  maintenance_nodes: ['virt66.example.com']
+```
+Afterwards, all guest objects will be moved to other nodes in the cluster by ensuring the best balancing.
+
 ## Misc
 ### Bugs
 Bugs can be reported via the GitHub issue tracker [here](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/issues). You may also report bugs via email or deliver PRs to fix them on your own. Therefore, you might also see the contributing chapter.
@@ -387,13 +418,18 @@ Feel free to add further documentation, to adjust already existing one or to con
 You can also find additional and more detailed documentation within the [docs/](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/tree/main/docs) directory.
 
 ### Support
-If you need assistance or have any questions, we offer support through our dedicated [chat room](https://matrix.to/#/#proxlb:gyptazy.com) in Matrix and on Reddit. Join our community for real-time help, advice, and discussions. Connect with us in our dedicated chat room for immediate support and live interaction with other users and developers. You can also visit our [GitHub Community](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/discussions/) to post your queries, share your experiences, and get support from fellow community members and moderators. You may also just open directly an issue [here](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/issues) on GitHub. We are here to help and ensure you have the best experience possible.
+If you need assistance or have any questions, we offer support through our dedicated [chat room](https://matrix.to/#/#proxlb:gyptazy.com) in Matrix or [Discord](https://discord.gg/JemGu7WbfQ). Join our community for real-time help, advice, and discussions. The Matrix and Discord room are bridged to ensure that the communication is not splitted - so simply feel free to join which fits most to you!
+
+Connect with us in our dedicated chat room for immediate support and live interaction with other users and developers. You can also visit our [GitHub Community](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/discussions/) to post your queries, share your experiences, and get support from fellow community members and moderators. You may also just open directly an issue [here](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/issues) on GitHub.
 
 | Support Channel | Link |
 |------|:------:|
 | Matrix | [#proxlb:gyptazy.com](https://matrix.to/#/#proxlb:gyptazy.com) |
+| Discord | [Discord](https://discord.gg/JemGu7WbfQ) |
 | GitHub Community | [GitHub Community](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/discussions/)
 | GitHub | [ProxLB GitHub](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/issues) |
 
+**Note:** Please always keep in mind that this is a one-man show project without any further help. This includes coding, testing, packaging and all the infrastructure around it to keep this project up and running.
+
 ### Author(s)
  * Florian Paul Azim Hoberg @gyptazy (https://gyptazy.com)

config/proxlb_example.yaml

@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+proxmox_api:
+  hosts: ['virt01.example.com', '10.10.10.10', 'fe01::bad:code::cafe']
+  user: root@pam
+  pass: crazyPassw0rd!
+  # API Token method
+  # token_id: proxlb
+  # token_secret: 430e308f-1337-1337-beef-1337beefcafe
+  ssl_verification: True
+  timeout: 10
+  # API Connection retries
+  # retries: 1
+  # wait_time: 1
+
+proxmox_cluster:
+  maintenance_nodes: ['virt66.example.com']
+  ignore_nodes: []
+  overprovisioning: True
+
+balancing:
+  enable: True
+  enforce_affinity: False
+  parallel: False
+  # If running parallel job, you can define
+  # the amount of prallel jobs (default: 5)
+  parallel_jobs: 1
+  live: True
+  with_local_disks: True
+  balance_types: ['vm', 'ct']
+  max_job_validation: 1800
+  balanciness: 5
+  method: memory
+  mode: used
+
+service:
+  daemon: True
+  schedule:
+    interval: 12
+    format: hours
+  delay:
+    enable: False
+    time: 1
+    format: hours
+  log_level: INFO

debian/changelog

@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+proxlb (1.1.5) stable; urgency=medium
+
+  * Allow custom API ports instead of fixed tcp/8006. (Closes: #260)
+
+ -- Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>  Mon, 14 Jul 2025 11:07:34 +0000
+
+proxlb (1.1.4) stable; urgency=medium
+
+  * Allow pinning of guests to a group of nodes. (Closes: #245)
+  * Modified log levels to make output lighter at INFO level. (Closes: #255)
+  * ixed an issue where balancing was performed in combination of deactivated balancing and dry-run mode. (Closes: #248)
+
+ -- Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>  Fri, 27 Jun 2025 16:22:58 +0000
+
+proxlb (1.1.3) stable; urgency=medium
+
+  * Add relaod (SIGHUP) function to ProxLB to reload the configuration. (Closes: #189)
+  * Add optional wait time parameter to delay execution until the service takes action. (Closes: #239)
+  * Make the amount of parallel migrations configurable. (Closes: #241)
+  * Use the average CPU consumption of a guest within the last 60 minutes instead of the current CPU usage. (Closes: #94)
+  * Align maintenance mode with Proxmox HA maintenance mode. (Closes: #232)
+
+ -- Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>  Thu, 19 Jun 2025 09:10:43 +0000
+
+proxlb (1.1.2) stable; urgency=medium
+
+  * Add a configurable retry mechanism when connecting to the Proxmox API. (Closed: #157)
+  * Add 1-to-1 relationships between guest and hypervisor node to ping a guest on a node. (Closes #218)
+  * Force type cast cpu count of guests to int for some corner cases where a str got returned. (Closed #222)
+  * Fix systemd unit file to run after network on non PVE nodes. (Closes #137)
+
+ -- Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>  Mon, 13 May 2025 18:12:04 +0000
+
+proxlb (1.1.1) stable; urgency=medium
+
+  * Fix tag evluation for VMs for being ignored for further balancing. (Closes: #163)
+  * Improve logging verbosity of messages that had a wrong servity. (Closes: #165)
+  * Providing the API upstream error message when migration fails in debug mode (Closes: #205)
+  * Change the default behaviour of the daemon mode to active. (Closes: #176)
+  * Change the default banalcing mode to used instead of assigned. (Closes: #180)
+  * Set cpu_used to the cpu usage, which is a percent, times the total number of cores to get a number where guest cpu_used can be added to nodes cpu_used and be meaningful. (Closes: #195)
+  * Honor the value when balancing should not be performed and stop balancing. (Closes: #174)
+  * Allow the use of minutes instead of hours and only accept hours or minutes in the format. (Closes: #187)
+  * Remove hard coded memory usage from lowest usage node and use method and mode specified in configuration instead. (Closes: #197)
+  * Fix the guest type relationship in the logs when a migration job failed. (Closes: #204)
+  * Requery a guest if that running guest reports 0 cpu usage. (Closes: #200)
+
+ -- Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>  Sat, 20 Apr 2025 20:55:02 +0000
+
+proxlb (1.1.0) stable; urgency=medium
+
+  * Refactored code base of ProxLB. (Closes: #114)
+
+ -- Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>  Mon, 17 Mar 2025 18:55:02 +0000

debian/control

@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+Source: proxlb
+Maintainer: Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>
+Section: admin
+Priority: optional
+Standards-Version: 4.5.0
+Build-Depends: debhelper-compat (= 13), dh-python, python3-all, python3-setuptools
+
+Package: proxlb
+Architecture: all
+Depends: ${python3:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}, python3-requests, python3-urllib3, python3-proxmoxer, python3-yaml 
+Description: A DRS alike Load Balancer for Proxmox Clusters
+ An advanced DRS alike loadbalancer for Proxmox clusters that also supports maintenance modes and affinity/anti-affinity rules.

debian/install

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+proxlb /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/
+service/proxlb.service /lib/systemd/system/

debian/postinst

@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+set -e
+
+#DEBHELPER#
+if [ "$1" = "configure" ]; then
+    systemctl enable proxlb.service
+    systemctl restart proxlb.service || true
+
+    # Create the 'plb' user if it does not exist
+    if ! id "plb" &>/dev/null; then
+        useradd --system --home /var/lib/proxlb --create-home --shell /usr/sbin/nologin --group nogroup plb
+        echo "User 'plb' created."
+    else
+        echo "User 'plb' already exists, skipping creation."
+    fi
+fi

debian/prerm

@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+set -e
+
+#DEBHELPER#
+if [ "$1" = "remove" ]; then
+    systemctl stop proxlb.service || true
+    systemctl disable proxlb.service || true
+
+    # Remove the 'plb' user if it exists
+    if id "plb" &>/dev/null; then
+        userdel --remove plb
+        echo "User 'plb' removed."
+    else
+        echo "User 'plb' does not exist, skipping removal."
+    fi
+fi

debian/rules

@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+#!/usr/bin/make -f
+%:
+	dh $@ --with python3 --buildsystem=pybuild
+

debian/source/format

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+3.0 (native)

docker-compose.yml

@@ -1,7 +0,0 @@
-services:
-  proxlb:
-    build: .
-    volumes:
-      - ./proxlb.conf:/etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf
-    restart: unless-stopped
-    container_name: proxlb

docs/01_Installation.md

@@ -1,32 +0,0 @@
-# Installation
-
-## Packages
-The easiest way to get started is by using the ready-to-use packages that I provide on my CDN and to run it on a Linux Debian based system. This can also be one of the Proxmox nodes itself.
-
-```
-wget https://cdn.gyptazy.ch/files/amd64/debian/proxlb/proxlb_0.9.9_amd64.deb
-dpkg -i proxlb_0.9.9_amd64.deb
-# Adjust your config
-vi /etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf
-systemctl restart proxlb
-systemctl status proxlb
-```
-
-## Container (Docker/Podman)
-Creating a container image of ProxLB is straightforward using the provided Dockerfile. The Dockerfile simplifies the process by automating the setup and configuration required to get ProxLB running in a container. Simply follow the steps in the Dockerfile to build the image, ensuring all dependencies and configurations are correctly applied. For those looking for an even quicker setup, a ready-to-use ProxLB container image is also available, eliminating the need for manual building and allowing for immediate deployment.
-
-```bash
-git clone https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB.git
-cd ProxLB
-build -t proxlb .
-```
-
-Afterwards simply adjust the config file to your needs:
-```
-vi /etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf
-```
-
-Finally, start the created container.
-```bash
-docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd)/proxlb.conf:/etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf proxlb
-```

docs/01_requirements.md

@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
+# Table of Contents
+
+- [Requirements](#requirements)
+- [Where To Run?](#where-to-run)
+
+## Requirements
+ProxLB is a sophisticated load balancer designed to enhance the management and distribution of workloads within a Proxmox cluster. By fully utilizing the Proxmox API, ProxLB eliminates the need for additional SSH access, streamlining cluster management while maintaining robust security. This chapter outlines the general requirements necessary to deploy and operate ProxLB effectively.
+
+### Proxmox Cluster Requirements
+To use ProxLB, you must have an existing Proxmox cluster consisting of at least two nodes. While traditional load balancers often struggle to manage minimal node configurations, ProxLB is optimized to provide efficient load distribution even in a two-node environment. The more nodes present in the cluster, the better ProxLB can optimize resource usage and manage workloads.
+
+### ProxLB Package Requirements
+Next to the previously mentioned requirements, ProxLB also requires you to fit the following ones:
+* Python3.x
+* proxmoxer
+* requests
+* urllib3
+* pyyaml
+
+### Seamless API Integration
+ProxLB relies exclusively on the Proxmox API for all management tasks. This eliminates the need for direct SSH access, ensuring a cleaner and more secure interaction with the cluster. The API integration allows ProxLB to:
+
+- Monitor cluster health and node resource utilization
+- Migrate virtual machines (VMs) and containers as needed
+- Manage storage utilization and distribution
+- Implement load balancing policies
+
+### Authentication and Security Standards
+ProxLB fully supports Proxmox’s integrated user management system, providing robust authentication and access control. Key features include:
+
+- **Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA):** Enhances security by requiring multiple verification methods.
+- **API Key Support:** ProxLB can utilize API keys for authentication instead of traditional username/password combinations, minimizing exposure to credentials.
+- **Role-Based Access Control (RBAC):** Ensures administrators have fine-grained control over user permissions.
+
+### Flexible Storage Support
+ProxLB offers versatile storage management options, supporting both local and shared storage types. It efficiently balances storage workloads across the cluster using the following storage systems:
+
+- **Local Storage:** Direct-attached storage on each node.
+- **Shared Storage:** Includes options like iSCSI, NVMeOF, and NFS for centralized storage solutions.
+- **Ceph:** Integrated support for Ceph distributed storage, providing high availability and fault tolerance.
+
+### Network Infrastructure Requirements
+For optimal performance, ProxLB requires a reliable and high-speed network connection between the nodes in the cluster. Ensure that the network infrastructure meets the following criteria:
+
+- **Low Latency:** Essential for real-time load balancing and VM migration.
+- **Sufficient Bandwidth:** Adequate to handle storage access, data replication, and migration traffic.
+- **Redundant Network Paths:** Recommended for increased fault tolerance and uptime.
+
+### System Resource Allocation
+ProxLB itself requires minimal system resources to operate. However, for managing larger clusters or high workloads, ensure the node running ProxLB has adequate resources available:
+
+- **CPU:** A modern multi-core processor.
+- **Memory:** At least 2 GB of RAM.
+- **Storage:** Minimal disk space for configuration files and logs.
+
+
+## Where To Run?
+ProxLB can run on pretty anthing and only requires you to have a network connectivity to any of the Proxmox host's API (usually on tcp/8006).
+
+Therefore, you can simply run ProxLB on:
+* Bare-metal Systems
+* VMs (even inside the Proxmox cluster)
+* Docker/Podman Container
+* LXC Container
+* On a Proxmox node

docs/02_Configuration.md

@@ -1,48 +0,0 @@
-# Configuration
-
-## Balancing
-### By Used Memmory of VMs
-By continuously monitoring the current resource usage of VMs, ProxLB intelligently reallocates workloads to prevent any single node from becoming overloaded. This approach ensures that resources are balanced efficiently, providing consistent and optimal performance across the entire cluster at all times. To activate this balancing mode, simply activate the following option in your ProxLB configuration:
-```
-mode: used
-```
-Afterwards, restart the service (if running in daemon mode) to activate this rebalancing mode.
-
-### By Assigned Memory of VMs
-By ensuring that resources are always available for each VM, ProxLB prevents over-provisioning and maintains a balanced load across all nodes. This guarantees that users have consistent access to the resources they need. However, if the total assigned resources exceed the combined capacity of the cluster, ProxLB will issue a warning, indicating potential over-provisioning despite its best efforts to balance the load.  To activate this balancing mode, simply activate the following option in your ProxLB configuration:
-```
-mode: assigned
-```
-Afterwards, restart the service (if running in daemon mode) to activate this rebalancing mode.
-
-## Grouping
-### Include (Stay Together)
-<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.ch/images/plb-rebalancing-include-balance-group.jpg"/> Access the Proxmox Web UI by opening your web browser and navigating to your Proxmox VE web interface, then log in with your credentials. Navigate to the VM you want to tag by selecting it from the left-hand navigation panel. Click on the "Options" tab to view the VM's options, then select "Edit" or "Add" (depending on whether you are editing an existing tag or adding a new one). In the tag field, enter plb_include_ followed by your unique identifier, for example, plb_include_group1. Save the changes to apply the tag to the VM. Repeat these steps for each VM that should be included in the group.
-
-### Exclude (Stay Separate)
-<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.ch/images/plb-rebalancing-exclude-balance-group.jpg"/> Access the Proxmox Web UI by opening your web browser and navigating to your Proxmox VE web interface, then log in with your credentials. Navigate to the VM you want to tag by selecting it from the left-hand navigation panel. Click on the "Options" tab to view the VM's options, then select "Edit" or "Add" (depending on whether you are editing an existing tag or adding a new one). In the tag field, enter plb_exclude_ followed by your unique identifier, for example, plb_exclude_critical. Save the changes to apply the tag to the VM. Repeat these steps for each VM that should be excluded from being on the same node.
-
-### Ignore VMs (tag style)
-<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.ch/images/plb-rebalancing-ignore-vm.jpg"/>  In Proxmox, you can ensure that certain VMs are ignored during the rebalancing process by setting a specific tag within the Proxmox Web UI, rather than solely relying on configurations in the ProxLB config file. This can be achieved by adding the tag 'plb_ignore_vm' to the VM. Once this tag is applied, the VM will be excluded from any further rebalancing operations, simplifying the management process.
-
-## Authentication / User Account / User / Permissions
-### Authentication
-ProxLB also supports different accounts in ProxLB. Therefore, you can simply create a new user and group and add the required roles permissions.
-
-### Creating Dedicated User for Balanciung
-It is recommended to not use the `root@pam` user for balancing. Therefore, creating a new user might be suitable and is very easy to create.
-A new user can be created by the gui, api and cli. The required roles are stated in the next chapter, but you can also use the following lines
-to create a user on the cli with the required roles to balance VMs & CTs.
-
-```
-pveum role add ProxLBAdmin --privs Datastore.Audit,Sys.Audit,VM.Audit,VM.Migrate
-pveum user add proxlb_admin@pve --password <password>
-pveum acl modify / --roles ProxLBAdmin --users proxlb_admin@pve
-```
-
-### Required Roles
-When using ProxLB with a dedicated account, you might also keep the assigned roles low. Therefore, you need to ensure that the newly created user is at least assigned to the following roles:
-* Datastore.Audit (Required for storage evaluation)
-* Sys.Audit (Required to get resource metrics of the nodes)
-* VM.Audit  (Requited to get resource metrics of VMs/CTs)
-* VM.Migrate (Required for migration of VMs/CTs)

docs/02_installation.md

@@ -0,0 +1,164 @@
+# Table of Contents
+
+- [Installation](#installation)
+  - [Requirements / Dependencies](#requirements--dependencies)
+  - [Debian Package](#debian-package)
+    - [Quick-Start](#quick-start)
+    - [Details](#details)
+    - [Debian Packages (.deb files)](#debian-packages-deb-files)
+  - [RedHat Package](#redhat-package)
+  - [Container Images / Docker](#container-images--docker)
+    - [Overview of Images](#overview-of-images)
+  - [Source](#source)
+    - [Traditional System](#traditional-system)
+    - [Container Image](#container-image)
+- [Upgrading](#upgrading)
+  - [Upgrading from < 1.1.0](#upgrading-from--110)
+  - [Upgrading from >= 1.1.0](#upgrading-from--110)
+
+
+## Installation
+### Requirements / Dependencies
+* Python3.x
+* proxmoxer
+* requests
+* urllib3
+* pyyaml
+
+The dependencies can simply be installed with `pip` by running the following command:
+```
+pip install -r requirements.txt
+```
+
+*Note: Distribution packages, such like the provided `.deb` package will automatically resolve and install all required dependencies by using already packaged version from the distribution's repository. By using the Docker (container) image or Debian packages, you do not need to take any care of the requirements listed here.*
+
+### Debian Package
+ProxLB is a powerful and flexible load balancer designed to work across various architectures, including `amd64`, `arm64`, `rv64` and many other ones that support Python. It runs independently of the underlying hardware, making it a versatile choice for different environments. This chapter covers the step-by-step process to install ProxLB on Debian-based systems, including Debian clones like Ubuntu.
+
+#### Quick-Start
+You can simply use this snippet to install the repository and to install ProxLB on your system.
+
+```bash
+echo "deb https://repo.gyptazy.com/stable /" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/proxlb.list
+wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxlb.asc https://repo.gyptazy.com/repository.gpg
+apt-get update && apt-get -y install proxlb
+cp /etc/proxlb/proxlb_example.yaml /etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml
+# Adjust the config to your needs
+vi /etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml
+systemctl start proxlb
+```
+
+Afterwards, ProxLB is running in the background and balances your cluster by your defined balancing method (default: memory).
+
+#### Details
+ProxLB provides two different repositories:
+* https://repo.gyptazy.com/stable (only stable release)
+* https://repo.gyptazy.com/testing (bleeding edge - not recommended)
+
+The repository is signed and the GPG key can be found at:
+* https://repo.gyptazy.com/repository.gpg
+
+You can also simply import it by running:
+
+```
+# KeyID:  17169F23F9F71A14AD49EDADDB51D3EB01824F4C
+# UID:    gyptazy Solutions Repository <contact@gyptazy.com>
+# SHA256: 52c267e6f4ec799d40cdbdb29fa518533ac7942dab557fa4c217a76f90d6b0f3  repository.gpg
+
+wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxlb.asc https://repo.gyptazy.com/repository.gpg
+```
+
+*Note: The defined repositories `repo.gyptazy.com` and `repo.proxlb.de` are the same!*
+
+#### Debian Packages (.deb files)
+If you do not want to use the repository you can also find the debian packages as a .deb file on gyptazy's CDN at:
+* https://cdn.gyptazy.com/files/os/debian/proxlb/
+
+Afterwards, you can simply install the package by running:
+```bash
+dpkg -i proxlb_*.deb
+cp /etc/proxlb/proxlb_example.yaml /etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml
+# Adjust the config to your needs
+vi /etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml
+systemctl start proxlb
+```
+
+### RedHat Package
+There's currently no official support for RedHat based systems. However, there's a dummy .rpm package for such systems in the pipeline which can be found here:
+* https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/actions/workflows/20-pipeline-build-rpm-package.yml
+
+
+### Container Images / Docker
+Using the ProxLB container images is straight forward and only requires you to mount the config file.
+
+```bash
+# Pull the image
+docker pull cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:latest
+# Download the config
+wget -O proxlb.yaml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/refs/heads/main/config/proxlb_example.yaml
+# Adjust the config to your needs
+vi proxlb.yaml
+# Start the ProxLB container image with the ProxLB config
+docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd)/proxlb.yaml:/etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml proxlb
+```
+
+*Note: ProxLB container images are officially only available at cr.proxlb.de and cr.gyptazy.com.* 
+
+#### Overview of Images
+| Version | Image |
+|------|:------:|
+| latest | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:latest |
+| v1.1.0 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.1.0 |
+| v1.0.6 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.0.6 |
+| v1.0.5 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.0.5 |
+| v1.0.4 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.0.4 |
+| v1.0.3 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.0.3 |
+| v1.0.2 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.0.2 |
+| v1.0.0 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v1.0.0 |
+| v0.9.9 | cr.gyptazy.com/proxlb/proxlb:v0.9.9 |
+
+### Source
+ProxLB can also easily be used from the provided sources - for traditional systems but also as a Docker/Podman container image.
+
+#### Traditional System
+Setting up and running ProxLB from the sources is simple and requires just a few commands. Ensure Python 3 and the Python dependencies are installed on your system, then run ProxLB using the following command:
+```bash
+git clone https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB.git
+cd ProxLB
+```
+
+Afterwards simply adjust the config file to your needs:
+```bash
+vi config/proxlb.yaml
+```
+
+Start ProxLB by Python3 on the system:
+```bash
+python3 proxlb/main.py -c config/proxlb.yaml
+```
+
+#### Container Image
+Creating a container image of ProxLB is straightforward using the provided Dockerfile. The Dockerfile simplifies the process by automating the setup and configuration required to get ProxLB running in an Alpine container. Simply follow the steps in the Dockerfile to build the image, ensuring all dependencies and configurations are correctly applied. For those looking for an even quicker setup, a ready-to-use ProxLB container image is also available, eliminating the need for manual building and allowing for immediate deployment.
+
+```bash
+git clone https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB.git
+cd ProxLB
+docker build -t proxlb .
+```
+
+Afterwards simply adjust the config file to your needs:
+```bash
+vi config/proxlb.yaml
+```
+
+Finally, start the created container.
+```bash
+docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd)/proxlb.yaml:/etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml proxlb
+```
+
+## Upgrading
+### Upgrading from < 1.1.0
+Upgrading ProxLB is not supported due to a fundamental redesign introduced in version 1.1.x. With this update, ProxLB transitioned from a monolithic application to a pure Python-style project, embracing a more modular and flexible architecture. This shift aimed to improve maintainability and extensibility while keeping up with modern development practices. Additionally, ProxLB moved away from traditional ini-style configuration files and adopted YAML for configuration management. This change simplifies configuration handling, reduces the need for extensive validation, and ensures better type casting, ultimately providing a more streamlined and user-friendly experience.
+
+### Upgrading from >= 1.1.0
+Uprading within the current stable versions, starting from 1.1.0, will be possible in all supported ways.

docs/03_FAQ.md

@@ -1,87 +0,0 @@
-## FAQ
-
-### Could not import all dependencies
-ProxLB requires the Python library `proxmoxer`. This can simply be installed by the most
-system repositories. If you encounter this error message you simply need to install it.
-
-
-```
-# systemctl status proxlb
-x proxlb.service - Proxmox Rebalancing Service
-     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/proxlb.service; static)
-     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2024-07-06 10:25:16 UTC; 1s ago
-   Duration: 239ms
-    Process: 7285 ExecStart=/usr/bin/proxlb -c /etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf (code=exited, status=2)
-   Main PID: 7285 (code=exited, status=2)
-        CPU: 129ms
-
-Jul 06 10:25:16 build01 systemd[1]: Started proxlb.service - ProxLB.
-Jul 06 10:25:16 build01 proxlb[7285]:  proxlb: Error: [python-imports]: Could not import all dependencies. Please install "proxmoxer".
-```
-
-Debian/Ubuntu: apt-get install python3-proxmoxer
-If the package is not provided by your systems repository, you can also install it by running `pip3 install proxmoxer`.
-
-### How does it work?
-ProxLB is a load-balancing system designed to optimize the distribution of virtual machines (VMs) and containers (CTs) across a cluster. It works by first gathering resource usage metrics from all nodes in the cluster through the Proxmox API. This includes detailed resource metrics for each VM and CT on every node. ProxLB then evaluates the difference between the maximum and minimum resource usage of the nodes, referred to as "Balanciness." If this difference exceeds a predefined threshold (which is configurable), the system initiates the rebalancing process.
-
-Before starting any migrations, ProxLB validates that rebalancing actions are necessary and beneficial. Depending on the selected balancing mode — such as CPU, memory, or disk — it creates a balancing matrix. This matrix sorts the VMs by their maximum used or assigned resources, identifying the VM with the highest usage. ProxLB then places this VM on the node with the most free resources in the selected balancing type. This process runs recursively until the operator-defined Balanciness is achieved. Balancing can be defined for the used or max. assigned resources of VMs/CTs.
-
-### ProxLB config version is too low
-ProxLB may run into an error when the used config schema version is too low. This might happen after major changes that require new config options. Please make sure, to use a supported config version in addition to your running ProxLB config.
-
-Example Error:
-```
-Error: [config-version-validator]: ProxLB config version 2 is too low. Required: 3.
-```
-
-The easiest way to solve this, is by taking the minimum required config schema version from a git tag, representing the ProxLB version.
-
-### Logging
-ProxLB uses the `SystemdHandler` for logging. You can find all your logs in your systemd unit log or in the `journalctl`. In default, ProxLB only logs critical events. However, for further understanding of the balancing it might be useful to change this to `INFO` or `DEBUG` which can simply be done in the [proxlb.conf](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/blob/main/proxlb.conf#L14) file by changing the `log_verbosity` parameter.
-
-Available logging values:
-| Verbosity | Description |
-|------|:------:|
-| DEBUG | This option logs everything and is needed for debugging the code. |
-| INFO | This option provides insides behind the scenes. What/why has been something done and with which values. |
-| WARNING | This option provides only warning messages, which might be a problem in general but not for the application itself. |
-| CRITICAL | This option logs all critical events that will avoid running ProxLB. |
-
-### Motivation
-As a developer managing a cluster of virtual machines for my projects, I often encountered the challenge of resource imbalance. Nodes within the cluster would become unevenly loaded, with some nodes being overburdened while others remained underutilized. This imbalance led to inefficiencies, performance bottlenecks, and increased operational costs. Frustrated by the lack of an adequate solution to address this issue, I decided to develop the ProxLB (PLB) to ensure better resource distribution across my clusters.
-
-My primary motivation for creating PLB stemmed from my work on my BoxyBSD project, where I consistently faced the difficulty of maintaining balanced nodes while running various VM workloads but also on my personal clusters. The absence of an efficient rebalancing mechanism made it challenging to achieve optimal performance and stability. Recognizing the necessity for a tool that could gather and analyze resource metrics from both the cluster nodes and the running VMs, I embarked on developing ProxLB.
-
-PLB meticulously collects detailed resource usage data from each node in a Proxmox cluster, including CPU load, memory usage, and local disk space utilization. It also gathers comprehensive statistics from all running VMs, providing a granular understanding of the workload distribution. With this data, PLB intelligently redistributes VMs based on memory usage, local disk usage, and CPU usage. This ensures that no single node is overburdened, storage resources are evenly distributed, and the computational load is balanced, enhancing overall cluster performance.
-
-As an advocate of the open-source philosophy, I believe in the power of community and collaboration. By sharing solutions like PLB, I aim to contribute to the collective knowledge and tools available to developers facing similar challenges. Open source fosters innovation, transparency, and mutual support, enabling developers to build on each other's work and create better solutions together.
-
-Developing PLB was driven by a desire to solve a real problem I faced in my projects. However, the spirit behind this effort was to provide a valuable resource to the community. By open-sourcing PLB, I hope to help other developers manage their clusters more efficiently, optimize their resource usage, and reduce operational costs. Sharing this solution aligns with the core principles of open source, where the goal is not only to solve individual problems but also to contribute to the broader ecosystem.
-
-### Packages / Container Images
-Ready to use packages can be found at:
-* https://cdn.gyptazy.ch/files/amd64/debian/proxlb/
-* https://cdn.gyptazy.ch/files/amd64/ubuntu/proxlb/
-* https://cdn.gyptazy.ch/files/amd64/redhat/proxlb/
-* https://cdn.gyptazy.ch/files/amd64/freebsd/proxlb/
-
-Container Images for Podman, Docker etc., can be found at:
-| Version | Image |
-|------|:------:|
-| latest | cr.gyptazy.ch/proxlb/proxlb:latest |
-
-### Bugs
-Bugs can be reported via the GitHub issue tracker [here](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/issues). You may also report bugs via email or deliver PRs to fix them on your own. Therefore, you might also see the contributing chapter.
-
-### Contributing
-Feel free to add further documentation, to adjust already existing one or to contribute with code. Please take care about the style guide and naming conventions. You can find more in our [CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md) file.
-
-### Support
-If you need assistance or have any questions, we offer support through our dedicated [chat room](https://matrix.to/#/#proxlb:gyptazy.ch) in Matrix and on Reddit. Join our community for real-time help, advice, and discussions. Connect with us in our dedicated chat room for immediate support and live interaction with other users and developers. You can also visit our [Reddit community](https://www.reddit.com/r/Proxmox/comments/1e78ap3/introducing_proxlb_rebalance_your_vm_workloads/) to post your queries, share your experiences, and get support from fellow community members and moderators. You may also just open directly an issue [here](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/issues) on GitHub. We are here to help and ensure you have the best experience possible.
-
-| Support Channel | Link |
-|------|:------:|
-| Matrix | [#proxlb:gyptazy.ch](https://matrix.to/#/#proxlb:gyptazy.ch) |
-| Reddit | [Reddit community](https://www.reddit.com/r/Proxmox/comments/1e78ap3/introducing_proxlb_rebalance_your_vm_workloads/)  |
-| GitHub | [ProxLB GitHub](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/issues) |

docs/03_configuration.md

@@ -0,0 +1,216 @@
+# Table of Contents
+
+1. [Authentication / User Accounts / Permissions](#authentication--user-accounts--permissions)
+    1. [Authentication](#authentication)
+    2. [Creating a Dedicated User](#creating-a-dedicated-user)
+    3. [Creating an API Token for a User](#creating-an-api-token-for-a-user)
+    4. [Required Permissions for a User](#required-permissions-for-a-user)
+2. [Configuration](#configuration)
+    1. [Affinity & Anti-Affinity Rules](#affinity--anti-affinity-rules)
+        1. [Affinity Rules](#affinity-rules)
+        2. [Anti-Affinity Rules](#anti-affinity-rules)
+        3. [Affinity / Anti-Affinity Enforcing](#affinity--anti-affinity-enforcing)
+        4. [Ignore VMs](#ignore-vms)
+        5. [Pin VMs to Hypervisor Nodes](#pin-vms-to-hypervisor-nodes)
+    2. [API Loadbalancing](#api-loadbalancing)
+    3. [Ignore Host-Nodes or Guests](#ignore-host-nodes-or-guests)
+    4. [IPv6 Support](#ipv6-support)
+    5. [Logging / Log-Level](#logging--log-level)
+    6. [Parallel Migrations](#parallel-migrations)
+    7. [Run as a Systemd-Service](#run-as-a-systemd-service)
+    8. [SSL Self-Signed Certificates](#ssl-self-signed-certificates)
+
+## Authentication / User Accounts / Permissions
+### Authentication
+ProxLB supports the traditional username and password authentication method, which is familiar to many users. This method requires users to provide their credentials (username and password) to gain access to the Proxmox system. While this method is straightforward and easy to implement, it has several security limitations. Username and password combinations can be vulnerable to brute force attacks, where an attacker systematically attempts various combinations until the correct one is found. If a user's credentials are compromised through phishing, malware, or other means, the attacker can gain unauthorized access to the system. Additionally, traditional authentication does not provide granular control over permissions and access levels, potentially exposing sensitive operations to unauthorized users.
+
+To enhance security, ProxLB supports API token authentication. API tokens are unique identifiers that are used to authenticate API requests. They offer several advantages over traditional username and password authentication. API tokens are more secure as they are typically long, random strings that are difficult to guess. They can be revoked and regenerated as needed, reducing the risk of unauthorized access. API tokens can be associated with specific user accounts that have only the required permissions, ensuring that users only have access to the resources and operations they need. Furthermore, API tokens can be used for automated scripts and applications, facilitating seamless integration with other systems and services.
+
+When Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) or Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is enabled in the Proxmox cluster, the system enforces the use of API tokens for authentication. This is because traditional username and password authentication is not considered secure enough in conjunction with MFA/2FA. To ensure the highest level of security when using API tokens, follow these best practices: Use dedicated user accounts for API tokens, each with only the necessary permissions. This limits the potential impact of a compromised token. Ensure that API tokens are long, random, and unique. Avoid using easily guessable patterns or sequences. Periodically regenerate and replace API tokens to minimize the risk of long-term exposure. Store API tokens securely, using environment variables or secure vaults. Avoid hardcoding tokens in source code or configuration files. Regularly monitor and audit the usage of API tokens to detect any suspicious activity or unauthorized access.
+
+### Creating a Dedicated User
+It is advisable to avoid using the default root@pam user for balancing tasks in ProxLB. Instead, creating a dedicated user account is recommended and can be done easily. You can create a new user through the GUI, API, or CLI. While the detailed roles required for balancing are outlined in the next chapter, you can also use the following CLI commands to create a user with the necessary roles to manage Virtual Machines (VMs) and Containers (CTs):
+
+```
+pveum role add proxlb --privs Datastore.Audit,Sys.Audit,VM.Audit,VM.Migrate
+pveum user add proxlb@pve --password <password>
+pveum acl modify / --roles proxlb --users proxlb@pve
+```
+
+*Note: The user management can also be done on the WebUI without invoking the CLI.*
+
+### Creating an API Token for a User
+Create an API token for user proxlb@pve with token ID proxlb and deactivated privilege separation:
+```
+pveum user token add proxlb@pve proxlb --privsep 0
+```
+
+Afterwards, you get the token secret returned. You can now add those entries to your ProxLB config. Make sure, that you also keep the `user` parameter, next to the new token parameters.
+
+> [!IMPORTANT]  
+> The parameter `pass` then needs to be **absent**! You should also take care about the privilege and authentication mechanism behind Proxmox. You might want or even might not want to use privilege separation and this is up to your personal needs and use case.
+
+| Proxmox API  | ProxLB Config  | Example  |
+|---|---|---|
+| User  | [user](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/blob/main/config/proxlb_example.yaml#L3) | proxlb@pve  |
+| Token ID  | [token_id](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/blob/main/config/proxlb_example.yaml#L6) | proxlb  |
+| Token Secret  | [token_secret](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/blob/main/config/proxlb_example.yaml#L7)  |  430e308f-1337-1337-beef-1337beefcafe |
+
+*Note: The API token configuration can also be done on the WebUI without invoking the CLI.*
+
+### Required Permissions for a User
+To ensure that ProxLB operates effectively and securely, it is essential to assign the appropriate permissions to the user accounts responsible for managing the load balancing tasks. The following permissions are the minimum required for a user to perform essential ProxLB operations:
+
+* `Datastore.Audit`: Grants the ability to audit and view datastore information.
+* `Sys.Audit`: Allows the user to audit and view system information.
+* `VM.Audit`: Enables the user to audit and view virtual machine details.
+* `VM.Migrate`: Provides the permission to migrate virtual machines.
+
+Assigning these permissions ensures that the user can access necessary information and perform critical operations related to load balancing without granting excessive privileges. This practice helps maintain a secure and efficient ProxLB environment.
+
+## Configuration
+
+### Affinity & Anti-Affinity Rules
+ProxLB provides an advanced mechanism to define affinity and anti-affinity rules, enabling precise control over virtual machine (VM) placement. These rules help manage resource distribution, improve high availability configurations, and optimize performance within a Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) cluster. By leveraging Proxmox’s integrated access management, ProxLB ensures that users can only define and manage rules for guests they have permission to access.
+
+ProxLB implements affinity and anti-affinity rules through a tag-based system within the Proxmox web interface. Each guest (virtual machine or container) can be assigned specific tags, which then dictate its placement behavior. This method maintains a streamlined and secure approach to managing VM relationships while preserving Proxmox’s inherent permission model.
+
+#### Affinity Rules
+<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/proxlb-affinity-rules.jpg"/> Affinity rules are used to group certain VMs together, ensuring that they run on the same host whenever possible. This can be beneficial for workloads requiring low-latency communication, such as clustered databases or application servers that frequently exchange data.
+
+To define an affinity rule which keeps all guests assigned to this tag together on a node, users assign a tag with the prefix `plb_affinity_$TAG`:
+
+##### Example for Screenshot
+```
+plb_affinity_talos
+```
+
+As a result, ProxLB will attempt to place all VMs with the `plb_affinity_web` tag on the same host (see also the attached screenshot with the same node).
+
+#### Anti-Affinity Rules
+<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/proxlb-anti-affinity-rules.jpg"/> Conversely, anti-affinity rules ensure that designated VMs do not run on the same physical host. This is particularly useful for high-availability setups, where redundancy is crucial. Ensuring that critical services are distributed across multiple hosts reduces the risk of a single point of failure.
+
+To define an anti-affinity rule that ensures to not move systems within this group to the same node, users assign a tag with the prefix:
+
+##### Example for Screenshot
+```
+plb_anti_affinity_ntp
+```
+
+As a result, ProxLB will try to place the VMs with the `plb_anti_affinity_ntp` tag on different hosts (see also the attached screenshot with the different nodes).
+
+**Note:** While this ensures that ProxLB tries distribute these VMs across different physical hosts within the Proxmox cluster this may not always work. If you have more guests attached to the group than nodes in the cluster, we still need to run them anywhere. If this case occurs, the next one with the most free resources will be selected.
+
+### Affinity / Anti-Affinity Enforcing
+When a cluster is already balanced and does not require further adjustments, enabling the enforce_affinity parameter ensures that affinity and anti-affinity rules are still respected. This parameter prioritizes the placement of guest objects according to these rules, even if it leads to slight resource imbalances or increased migration overhead. Regularly reviewing and updating these rules, along with monitoring cluster performance, helps maintain optimal performance and reliability. By carefully managing these aspects, you can create a cluster environment that meets your specific needs and maintains a good balance of resources.
+
+```
+balancing:
+  enforce_affinity: True
+```
+
+*Note: This may have impacts to the cluster. Depending on the created group matrix, the result may also be an unbalanced cluster.*
+
+### Ignore VMs / CTs
+<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/proxlb-ignore-vm-movement.jpg"/> Guests, such as VMs or CTs, can also be completely ignored. This means, they won't be affected by any migration (even when (anti-)affinity rules are enforced). To ensure a proper resource evaluation, these guests are still collected and evaluated but simply skipped for balancing actions. Another thing is the implementation. While ProxLB might have a very restricted configuration file including the file permissions, this file is only read- and writeable by the Proxmox administrators. However, we might have user and groups who want to define on their own that their systems shouldn't be moved. Therefore, these users can simpy set a specific tag to the guest object - just like the (anti)affinity rules.
+
+To define a guest to be ignored from the balancing, users assign a tag with the prefix `plb_ignore_$TAG`:
+
+#### Example for Screenshot
+```
+plb_ignore_dev
+```
+
+As a result, ProxLB will not migrate this guest with the `plb_ignore_dev` tag to any other node.
+
+**Note:** Ignored guests are really ignored. Even by enforcing affinity rules this guest will be ignored.
+
+### Pin VMs to Specific Hypervisor Nodes
+<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/proxlb-tag-node-pinning.jpg"/> Guests, such as VMs or CTs, can also be pinned to specific nodes in the cluster. This might be usefull when running applications with some special licensing requirements that are only fulfilled on certain nodes. It might also be interesting, when some physical hardware is attached to a node, that is not available in general within the cluster.
+
+To pin a guest to a specific cluster node, users assign a tag with the prefix `plb_pin_$nodename` to the desired guest:
+
+#### Example for Screenshot
+```
+plb_pin_node03
+```
+
+As a result, ProxLB will pin the guest `dev-vm01` to the node `virt03`.
+
+You can also repeat this step multiple times for different node names to create a potential group of allowed hosts where a the guest may be served on. In this case, ProxLB takes the node with the lowest used resources according to the defined balancing values from this group.
+
+**Note:** The given node names from the tag are validated. This means, ProxLB validated if the given node name is really part of the cluster. In case of a wrongly defined or unavailable node name it continous to use the regular processes to make sure the guest keeps running.
+
+### API Loadbalancing
+ProxLB supports API loadbalancing, where one or more host objects can be defined as a list. This ensures, that you can even operator ProxLB without further changes when one or more nodes are offline or in a maintenance. When defining multiple hosts, the first reachable one will be picked. You can speficy custom ports in the list. There are 4 ways of defining hosts with ports:
+1. Hostname of IPv4 without port (in this case the default 8006 will be used)
+2. Hostname or IPv4 with port
+3. IPv6 in brackets with optional port
+4. IPv6 without brackets, in this case the port is assumed after last colon
+
+```
+proxmox_api:
+  hosts: ['virt01.example.com', '10.10.10.10', 'fe01::bad:code::cafe', 'virt01.example.com:443', '[fc00::1]', '[fc00::1]:443', 'fc00::1:8006']
+```
+
+### Ignore Host-Nodes or Guests
+In managing a Proxmox environment, it's often necessary to exclude certain host nodes and guests from various operations. For host nodes, this exclusion can be achieved by specifying them in the ignore_nodes parameter within the proxmox_api chapter, effectively preventing any automated processes from interacting with these nodes. Guests, on the other hand, can be ignored by assigning them a specific tag that starts with or is equal to plb_ignore, ensuring they are omitted from any automated tasks or monitoring. By implementing these configurations, administrators can fine-tune their Proxmox management to focus only on relevant nodes and guests, optimizing operational efficiency and resource allocation.
+
+```
+proxmox_cluster:
+  ignore_nodes: ['node01', 'node02']
+```
+
+### IPv6 Support
+Yes, ProxLB fully supports IPv6.
+
+### Logging / Log-Level
+ProxLB supports systemd for seamless service management on Linux distributions. To enable this, create a proxLB.service file in /etc/systemd/system/ from `service/proxlb.service` within this repository.
+
+On systems without systemd, such as FreeBSD and macOS, ProxLB runs with similar configurations but logs to stdout and stderr. The logging level and verbosity can be set in the `service` section of the configuration file:
+
+```
+service:
+  log_level: DEBUG
+```
+
+ProxLB only support the following log levels:
+* INFO
+* WARNING
+* CRITICAL
+* DEBUG
+
+### Parallel Migrations
+By default, parallel migrations are deactivated. This means, that a guest object gets migrated and the migration job is being watched until the VM or CT got moved to a new node. However, this may take a lot of time and many environments are fast enough to handle the IO load for multiple guest objects. However, there are always corner cases and this depends on your setup. Parallel migrations can be enabled by setting `parallel` to `True` within the `balancing` chapter:
+
+```
+balancing:
+  parallel: False
+```
+
+### Run as a Systemd-Service
+The proxlb systemd unit orchestrates the ProxLB application. ProxLB can be used either as a one-shot solution or run periodically, depending on the configuration specified in the daemon chapter of its configuration file.
+
+```
+service:
+  daemon: False
+    schedule:
+      interval: 12
+      format: hours
+```
+
+In this configuration:
+* `daemon`: False indicates that the ProxLB application is not running as a daemon and will execute as a one-shot solution.
+* `schedule`: 12 defines the interval for the schedule, specifying how often rebalancing should be done if running as a daemon.
+* `format`: Defines the given format of schedule where you can choose between `hours` or `minutes`.
+
+### SSL Self-Signed Certificates
+If you are using SSL self-signed certificates or non-valid certificated in general and do not want to deal with additional trust levels, you may also disable the SSL validation. This may mostly be helpful for dev- & test labs.
+
+SSL certificate validation can be disabled in the `proxmox_api` section in the config file by setting:
+```
+proxmox_api:
+    ssl_verification: False
+```
+
+*Note: Disabling SSL certificate validation is not recommended.*

docs/99-faq.md

@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+## Table of Contents
+
+1. [GUI Integration](#gui-integration)
+    - [How to install pve-proxmoxlb-service-ui package](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/issues/44)
+2. [Proxmox HA Integration](#proxmox-ha-integration)
+    - [Host groups: Honour HA groups](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/issues/65)
+
+### GUI Integration
+<img align="left" src="https://cdn.gyptazy.com/images/proxlb-GUI-integration.jpg"/> ProxLB can also be accessed through the Proxmox Web UI by installing the optional `pve-proxmoxlb-service-ui` package, which depends on the proxlb package. For full Web UI integration, this package must be installed on all nodes within the cluster. Once installed, a new menu item - `Rebalancing`, appears in the cluster level under the HA section. Once installed, it offers two key functionalities:
+* Rebalancing VM workloads
+* Migrate VM workloads away from a defined node (e.g. maintenance preparation)
+
+**Note:** This package is currently discontinued and will be readded at a later time. See also: [#44: How to install pve-proxmoxlb-service-ui package](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/issues/44).
+
+### Proxmox HA Integration
+Proxmox HA (High Availability) groups are designed to ensure that virtual machines (VMs) remain running within a Proxmox cluster. HA groups define specific rules for where VMs should be started or migrated in case of node failures, ensuring minimal downtime and automatic recovery.
+
+However, when used in conjunction with ProxLB, the built-in load balancer for Proxmox, conflicts can arise. ProxLB operates with its own logic for workload distribution, taking into account affinity and anti-affinity rules. While it effectively balances guest workloads, it may re-shift and redistribute VMs in a way that does not align with HA group constraints, potentially leading to unsuitable placements.
+
+Due to these conflicts, it is currently not recommended to use both HA groups and ProxLB simultaneously. The interaction between the two mechanisms can lead to unexpected behavior, where VMs might not adhere to HA group rules after being moved by ProxLB.
+
+A solution to improve compatibility between HA groups and ProxLB is under evaluation, aiming to ensure that both features can work together without disrupting VM placement strategies.
+
+See also: [#65: Host groups: Honour HA groups](https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/issues/65).

misc/01-replace-version.sh

@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+VERSION="1.1.4"
+
+sed -i "s/^__version__ = .*/__version__ = \"$VERSION\"/" "proxlb/utils/version.py"
+sed -i "s/version=\"[0-9]*\.[0-9]*\.[0-9]*\"/version=\"$VERSION\"/" setup.py
+echo "OK: Versions have been sucessfully set to $VERSION"

misc/02-create-changelog.sh

@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+git clone https://github.com/gyptazy/changelog-fragments-creator.git
+./changelog-fragments-creator/changelog-creator -f .changelogs/ -o CHANGELOG.md
+echo "Created changelog file"

packaging/01_package.sh

@@ -1,16 +0,0 @@
-#!/bin/bash
-sudo apt-get install rpm cmake git make python3-yaml
-
-git clone https://github.com/gyptazy/changelog-fragments-creator.git
-./changelog-fragments-creator/changelog-creator -f ../.changelogs/ -o ../CHANGELOG.md
-mkdir packages
-mkdir build
-cd build
-cmake ..
-cpack -G DEB .
-cpack -G RPM .
-cp *.deb ../packages
-cp *.rpm ../packages
-cd ..
-rm -rf build
-echo "Packages created. Packages can be found in directory: packages"

packaging/02_changelog_only.sh

@@ -1,4 +0,0 @@
-#!/bin/bash
-git clone https://github.com/gyptazy/changelog-fragments-creator.git
-./changelog-fragments-creator/changelog-creator -f ../.changelogs/ -o ../CHANGELOG.md
-echo "Created changelog file"

packaging/CMakeLists.txt

@@ -1,40 +0,0 @@
-cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)
-project(proxmox-rebalancing-service VERSION 1.0.6)
-
-install(PROGRAMS ../proxlb DESTINATION /bin)
-install(FILES ../proxlb.conf DESTINATION /etc/proxlb)
-install(FILES proxlb.service DESTINATION /etc/systemd/system)
-
-# General
-set(CPACK_PACKAGE_NAME "proxlb")
-set(CPACK_RESOURCE_FILE_LICENSE "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/../LICENSE")
-set(CPACK_RESOURCE_FILE_README "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/../README.md")
-set(CPACK_DEBIAN_PACKAGE_MAINTAINER "Florian Paul Azim <gyptazy> Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>")
-set(CPACK_PACKAGE_CONTACT "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>")
-set(CPACK_PACKAGE_VENDOR "gyptazy")
-
-# RPM packaging
-set(CPACK_PACKAGE_VERSION ${CMAKE_PROJECT_VERSION})
-set(CPACK_GENERATOR "RPM")
-set(CPACK_RPM_PACKAGE_ARCHITECTURE "amd64")
-set(CPACK_RPM_PACKAGE_SUMMARY "ProxLB - Rebalance VM workloads across nodes in Proxmox clusters.")
-set(CPACK_RPM_PACKAGE_DESCRIPTION "ProxLB - Rebalance VM workloads across nodes in Proxmox clusters.")
-set(CPACK_RPM_CHANGELOG_FILE "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/changelog_redhat")
-set(CPACK_PACKAGE_RELEASE 1)
-set(CPACK_RPM_PACKAGE_LICENSE "GPL 3.0")
-set(CPACK_RPM_PACKAGE_REQUIRES "python >= 3.2.0")
-
-# DEB packaging
-set(CPACK_DEBIAN_FILE_NAME DEB-DEFAULT)
-set(CPACK_DEBIAN_PACKAGE_ARCHITECTURE "amd64")
-set(CPACK_DEBIAN_PACKAGE_SUMMARY "ProxLB - Rebalance VM workloads across nodes in Proxmox clusters.")
-set(CPACK_DEBIAN_PACKAGE_DESCRIPTION "ProxLB - Rebalance VM workloads across nodes in Proxmox clusters.")
-set(CPACK_DEBIAN_PACKAGE_CONTROL_EXTRA "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/changelog_debian")
-set(CPACK_DEBIAN_PACKAGE_DEPENDS "python3, python3-proxmoxer")
-set(CPACK_DEBIAN_PACKAGE_LICENSE "GPL 3.0")
-
-# Install
-set(CPACK_PACKAGING_INSTALL_PREFIX ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX})
-set(CPACK_DEBIAN_PACKAGE_CONTROL_EXTRA "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/postinst;${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/conffiles")
-set(CPACK_RPM_POST_INSTALL_SCRIPT_FILE "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/postinst")
-include(CPack)

packaging/README.md

@@ -1,14 +0,0 @@
-## Build packages
-Building the packages requires cmake, deb and rpm.
-For building packages, simly run the following commands:
-
-```
-mkdir build
-cd build
-cmake ..
-cpack -G RPM .
-cpack -G DEB .
-```
-
-When running on Debian/Ubuntu you can directly call `01_package.sh`
-to create your own packages.

packaging/changelog_debian

@@ -1,63 +0,0 @@
-proxlb (1.0.5) unstable; urgency=low
-
-  * Fix migration from local disks.
-  * Fix allowed values (add DEBUG, WARNING) for log verbosity.
-  * Fix node (and its objects) evaluation when not reachable (e.g., maintenance).
-  * Fix evaluation of maintenance mode where comparing list & string resulted in a crash.
-  * Change docs to make bool usage in configs more clear.
-
- -- Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>  Wed, 30 Oct 2024 17:02:31 +0100
-
-proxlb (1.0.4) unstable; urgency=low
-
-  * Add feature to make API timeout configureable.
-  * Add maintenance mode to evacuate a node and move workloads for other nodes in the cluster.
-  * Add version output cli arg.
-  * Run storage balancing only on supported shared storages.
-  * Run storage balancing only when needed to save time.
-  * Fix CPU balancing where calculations are done in float instead of int. (by @glitchvern)
-  * Fix documentation for the underlying infrastructure.
-
- -- Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>  Fri, 11 Oct 2024 06:14:13 +0200
-
-proxlb (1.0.3) unstable; urgency=low
-
-  * Add a convert function to cast all bool alike options from configparser to bools.
-  * Add a config parser options for future features.
-  * Add a config versio schema that must be supported by ProxLB.
-  * Add feature to allow the API hosts being provided as a comma separated list.
-  * Add storage balancing function.
-  * Add doc how to add dedicated user for authentication. (by @Dulux-Oz)
-  * Add cli arg `-b` to return the next best node for next VM/CT placement.Fix some wonkey code styles.
-  * Provide a more reasonable output when HA services are not active in a Proxmox cluster.
-  * Improve the underlying code base for future implementations.
-  * Fix documentation for the master_only parameter placed in the wrong config section.
-  * Fixed `master_only` function by inverting the condition.
-  * Improved the overall validation and error handling.
-  * Fix bug in the `proxlb.conf` in the vm_balancing section.
-  * Fix handling of unset `ignore_nodes` and `ignore_vms` resulted in an attribute error.
-  * Fix anti-affinity rules not evaluating a new and different node.
-
- -- Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>  Wed, 11 Sep 2024 17:31:03 +0200
-
-proxlb (1.0.2) unstable; urgency=low
-
-  * Add option to run migration in parallel or sequentially.
-  * Add option to run ProxLB only on a Proxmox cluster master (req. HA feature).
-  * Fix daemon timer to use hours instead of minutes.
-  * Fix CMake packaging for Debian package to avoid overwriting the config file.
-  * Fix some wonkey code styles.
-
- -- Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>  Tue, 13 Aug 2024 17:28:14 +0200
-
-proxlb (1.0.0) unstable; urgency=low
-
-  * Initial release of ProxLB.
-
- -- Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>  Thu, 01 Aug 2024 17:04:12 +0200
-
-proxlb (0.9.0) unstable; urgency=low
-
-  * Initial development release of ProxLB as a tech preview.
-
- -- Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>  Sun, 07 Jul 2024 05:38:41 +0200

packaging/changelog_redhat

@@ -1,44 +0,0 @@
-* Wed Oct 30 2024 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>
-- Fix migration from local disks.
-- Fix allowed values (add DEBUG, WARNING) for log verbosity.
-- Fix node (and its objects) evaluation when not reachable (e.g., maintenance).
-- Fix evaluation of maintenance mode where comparing list & string resulted in a crash.
-- Change docs to make bool usage in configs more clear.
-
-* Fri Oct 11 2024 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>
-- Add feature to make API timeout configureable.
-- Add maintenance mode to evacuate a node and move workloads for other nodes in the cluster.
-- Add version output cli arg.
-- Run storage balancing only on supported shared storages.
-- Run storage balancing only when needed to save time.
-- Fix CPU balancing where calculations are done in float instead of int. (by @glitchvern)
-- Fix documentation for the underlying infrastructure.
-
-* Wed Sep 12 2024 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>
-- Add a convert function to cast all bool alike options from configparser to bools.
-- Add a config parser options for future features.
-- Add a config versio schema that must be supported by ProxLB.
-- Add feature to allow the API hosts being provided as a comma separated list.
-- Add storage balancing function.
-- Add doc how to add dedicated user for authentication. (by @Dulux-Oz)
-- Add cli arg `-b` to return the next best node for next VM/CT placement.Fix some wonkey code styles.
-- Provide a more reasonable output when HA services are not active in a Proxmox cluster.
-- Improve the underlying code base for future implementations.
-- Fix documentation for the master_only parameter placed in the wrong config section.
-- Fixed `master_only` function by inverting the condition.
-- Improved the overall validation and error handling.
-- Fix bug in the `proxlb.conf` in the vm_balancing section.
-- Fix handling of unset `ignore_nodes` and `ignore_vms` resulted in an attribute error.
-- Fix anti-affinity rules not evaluating a new and different node.
-
-* Tue Aug 13 2024 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>
-- Add option to run migration in parallel or sequentially.
-- Add option to run ProxLB only on a Proxmox cluster master (req. HA feature).
-- Fixed daemon timer to use hours instead of minutes.
-- Fixed some wonkey code styles.
-
-* Thu Aug 01 2024 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>
-- Initial release of ProxLB.
-
-* Sun Jul 07 2024 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy@gyptazy.com>
-- Initial development release of ProxLB as a tech preview.

packaging/conffiles

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-/etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf

packaging/postinst

@@ -1,5 +0,0 @@
-#!/bin/bash
-useradd -m plb 
-chown plb:plb /etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf
-chmod 600 /etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf
-systemctl daemon-reload

packaging/proxlb.service

@@ -1,6 +0,0 @@
-[Unit]
-Description=ProxLB - Rebalance VM workloads
-
-[Service]
-ExecStart=/usr/bin/proxlb -c /etc/proxlb/proxlb.conf
-User=plb

proxlb.conf

@@ -1,23 +0,0 @@
-[proxmox]
-api_host: hypervisor01.gyptazy.ch
-api_user: root@pam
-api_pass: FooBar
-verify_ssl: 1
-[vm_balancing]
-enable: 1
-method: memory
-mode: used
-maintenance_nodes: dummynode03,dummynode04
-ignore_nodes: dummynode01,dummynode02
-ignore_vms: testvm01,testvm02
-[storage_balancing]
-enable: 0
-[update_service]
-enable: 0
-[api]
-enable: 0
-[service]
-daemon: 1
-schedule: 24
-log_verbosity: CRITICAL
-config_version: 3

proxlb/main.py

@@ -0,0 +1,104 @@
+"""
+ProxLB is a load balancing tool for Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) clusters.
+It connects to the Proxmox API, retrieves information about nodes, guests, and groups,
+and performs calculations to determine the optimal distribution of resources across the
+cluster. The tool supports daemon mode for continuous operation and can log metrics and
+perform balancing actions based on the configuration provided. It also includes a CLI
+parser for handling command-line arguments and a custom logger for systemd integration.
+"""
+
+__author__ = "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy>"
+__copyright__ = "Copyright (C) 2025 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg (@gyptazy)"
+__license__ = "GPL-3.0"
+
+
+import logging
+import signal
+from utils.logger import SystemdLogger
+from utils.cli_parser import CliParser
+from utils.config_parser import ConfigParser
+from utils.proxmox_api import ProxmoxApi
+from models.nodes import Nodes
+from models.guests import Guests
+from models.groups import Groups
+from models.calculations import Calculations
+from models.balancing import Balancing
+from utils.helper import Helper
+
+
+def main():
+    """
+    ProxLB main function
+    """
+    # Initialize logging handler
+    logger = SystemdLogger(level=logging.INFO)
+
+    # Signal handler for SIGHUP
+    signal.signal(signal.SIGHUP, Helper.handler_sighup)
+
+    # Parses arguments passed from the CLI
+    cli_parser = CliParser()
+    cli_args = cli_parser.parse_args()
+    Helper.get_version(cli_args.version)
+
+    # Parse ProxLB config file
+    config_parser = ConfigParser(cli_args.config)
+    proxlb_config = config_parser.get_config()
+
+    # Update log level from config and fallback to INFO if not defined
+    logger.set_log_level(proxlb_config.get('service', {}).get('log_level', 'INFO'))
+
+    # Validate of an optional service delay
+    Helper.get_service_delay(proxlb_config)
+
+    # Connect to Proxmox API & create API object
+    proxmox_api = ProxmoxApi(proxlb_config)
+
+    # Overwrite password after creating the API object
+    proxlb_config["proxmox_api"]["pass"] = "********"
+
+    while True:
+
+        # Validate if reload signal was sent during runtime
+        # and reload the ProxLB configuration and adjust log level
+        if Helper.proxlb_reload:
+            logger.info("Reloading ProxLB configuration.")
+            proxlb_config = config_parser.get_config()
+            logger.set_log_level(proxlb_config.get('service', {}).get('log_level', 'INFO'))
+            Helper.proxlb_reload = False
+
+        # Get all required objects from the Proxmox cluster
+        meta = {"meta": proxlb_config}
+        nodes = Nodes.get_nodes(proxmox_api, proxlb_config)
+        guests = Guests.get_guests(proxmox_api, nodes, meta)
+        groups = Groups.get_groups(guests, nodes)
+
+        # Merge obtained objects from the Proxmox cluster for further usage
+        proxlb_data = {**meta, **nodes, **guests, **groups}
+        Helper.log_node_metrics(proxlb_data)
+
+        # Update the initial node resource assignments
+        # by the previously created groups.
+        Calculations.set_node_assignments(proxlb_data)
+        Calculations.get_most_free_node(proxlb_data, cli_args.best_node)
+        Calculations.relocate_guests_on_maintenance_nodes(proxlb_data)
+        Calculations.get_balanciness(proxlb_data)
+        Calculations.relocate_guests(proxlb_data)
+        Helper.log_node_metrics(proxlb_data, init=False)
+
+        # Perform balancing actions via Proxmox API
+        if proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("enable", False):
+            if not cli_args.dry_run:
+                Balancing(proxmox_api, proxlb_data)
+
+        # Validate if the JSON output should be
+        # printed to stdout
+        Helper.print_json(proxlb_data, cli_args.json)
+        # Validate daemon mode
+        Helper.get_daemon_mode(proxlb_config)
+
+        logger.debug(f"Finished: __main__")
+
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    main()

proxlb/models/balancing.py

@@ -0,0 +1,233 @@
+"""
+The Balancing class is responsible for processing workloads on Proxmox clusters.
+It processes the previously generated data (held in proxlb_data) and moves guests
+and other supported types across Proxmox clusters based on the defined values by an operator.
+"""
+
+
+__author__ = "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy>"
+__copyright__ = "Copyright (C) 2025 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg (@gyptazy)"
+__license__ = "GPL-3.0"
+
+
+import proxmoxer
+import time
+from itertools import islice
+from utils.logger import SystemdLogger
+from typing import Dict, Any
+
+logger = SystemdLogger()
+
+
+class Balancing:
+    """
+    The balancing class is responsible for processing workloads on Proxmox clusters.
+    The previously generated data (hold in proxlb_data) will processed and guests and
+    other supported types will be moved across Proxmox clusters based on the defined
+    values by an operator.
+
+    Methods:
+    __init__(self, proxmox_api: any, proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]):
+        Initializes the Balancing class with the provided ProxLB data and initiates the rebalancing
+        process for guests.
+
+    exec_rebalancing_vm(self, proxmox_api: any, proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any], guest_name: str) -> None:
+        Executes the rebalancing of a virtual machine (VM) to a new node within the cluster. Logs the migration
+        process and handles exceptions.
+
+    exec_rebalancing_ct(self, proxmox_api: any, proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any], guest_name: str) -> None:
+        Executes the rebalancing of a container (CT) to a new node within the cluster. Logs the migration
+        process and handles exceptions.
+
+    get_rebalancing_job_status(self, proxmox_api: any, proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any], guest_name: str, guest_current_node: str, job_id: int, retry_counter: int = 1) -> bool:
+        Monitors the status of a rebalancing job on a Proxmox node until it completes or a timeout
+        is reached. Returns True if the job completed successfully, False otherwise.
+    """
+
+    def __init__(self, proxmox_api: any, proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]):
+        """
+        Initializes the Balancing class with the provided ProxLB data.
+
+        Args:
+            proxmox_api (object): The Proxmox API client instance used to interact with the Proxmox cluster.
+            proxlb_data (dict): A dictionary containing data related to the ProxLB load balancing configuration.
+        """
+        def chunk_dict(data, size):
+            """
+            Splits a dictionary into chunks of a specified size.
+            Args:
+                data (dict): The dictionary to be split into chunks.
+                size (int): The size of each chunk.
+            Yields:
+                dict: A chunk of the original dictionary with the specified size.
+            """
+            logger.debug("Starting: chunk_dict.")
+            it = iter(data.items())
+            for chunk in range(0, len(data), size):
+                yield dict(islice(it, size))
+
+        # Validate if balancing should be performed in parallel or sequentially.
+        # If parallel balancing is enabled, set the number of parallel jobs.
+        parallel_jobs = proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("parallel_jobs", 5)
+        if not proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("parallel", False):
+            parallel_jobs = 1
+            logger.debug("Balancing: Parallel balancing is disabled. Running sequentially.")
+        else:
+            logger.debug(f"Balancing: Parallel balancing is enabled. Running with {parallel_jobs} parallel jobs.")
+
+        for chunk in chunk_dict(proxlb_data["guests"], parallel_jobs):
+            jobs_to_wait = []
+
+            for guest_name, guest_meta in chunk.items():
+
+                # Check if the guest's target is not the same as the current node
+                if guest_meta["node_current"] != guest_meta["node_target"]:
+
+                    # Check if the guest is not ignored and perform the balancing
+                    # operation based on the guest type
+                    if not guest_meta["ignore"]:
+                        job_id = None
+
+                        # VM Balancing
+                        if guest_meta["type"] == "vm":
+                            job_id = self.exec_rebalancing_vm(proxmox_api, proxlb_data, guest_name)
+
+                        # CT Balancing
+                        elif guest_meta["type"] == "ct":
+                            job_id = self.exec_rebalancing_ct(proxmox_api, proxlb_data, guest_name)
+
+                        # Just in case we get a new type of guest in the future
+                        else:
+                            logger.critical(f"Balancing: Got unexpected guest type: {guest_meta['type']}. Cannot proceed guest: {guest_meta['name']}.")
+
+                        if job_id:
+                            jobs_to_wait.append((guest_name, guest_meta["node_current"], job_id))
+
+                    else:
+                        logger.debug(f"Balancing: Guest {guest_name} is ignored and will not be rebalanced.")
+                else:
+                    logger.debug(f"Balancing: Guest {guest_name} is already on the target node {guest_meta['node_target']} and will not be rebalanced.")
+
+            # Wait for all jobs in the current chunk to complete
+            for guest_name, node, job_id in jobs_to_wait:
+                self.get_rebalancing_job_status(proxmox_api, proxlb_data, guest_name, node, job_id)
+
+    def exec_rebalancing_vm(self, proxmox_api: any, proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any], guest_name: str) -> None:
+        """
+        Executes the rebalancing of a virtual machine (VM) to a new node within the cluster.
+        This function initiates the migration of a specified VM to a target node as part of the
+        load balancing process. It logs the migration process and handles any exceptions that
+        may occur during the migration.
+        Args:
+            proxmox_api (object): The Proxmox API client instance used to interact with the Proxmox cluster.
+            proxlb_data (dict): A dictionary containing data related to the ProxLB load balancing configuration.
+            guest_name (str): The name of the guest VM to be migrated.
+        Raises:
+            proxmox_api.core.ResourceException: If an error occurs during the migration process.
+        Returns:
+            None
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: exec_rebalancing_vm.")
+        guest_id = proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["id"]
+        guest_node_current = proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["node_current"]
+        guest_node_target = proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["node_target"]
+
+        if proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("live", True):
+            online_migration = 1
+        else:
+            online_migration = 0
+
+        if proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("with_local_disks", True):
+            with_local_disks = 1
+        else:
+            with_local_disks = 0
+
+        migration_options = {
+            'target': {guest_node_target},
+            'online': online_migration,
+            'with-local-disks': with_local_disks
+        }
+
+        try:
+            logger.info(f"Balancing: Starting to migrate VM guest {guest_name} from {guest_node_current} to {guest_node_target}.")
+            job_id = proxmox_api.nodes(guest_node_current).qemu(guest_id).migrate().post(**migration_options)
+        except proxmoxer.core.ResourceException as proxmox_api_error:
+            logger.critical(f"Balancing: Failed to migrate guest {guest_name} of type VM due to some Proxmox errors. Please check if resource is locked or similar.")
+            logger.debug(f"Balancing: Failed to migrate guest {guest_name} of type VM due to some Proxmox errors: {proxmox_api_error}")
+        logger.debug("Finished: exec_rebalancing_vm.")
+        return job_id
+
+    def exec_rebalancing_ct(self, proxmox_api: any, proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any], guest_name: str) -> None:
+        """
+        Executes the rebalancing of a container (CT) to a new node within the cluster.
+        This function initiates the migration of a specified CT to a target node as part of the
+        load balancing process. It logs the migration process and handles any exceptions that
+        may occur during the migration.
+        Args:
+            proxmox_api (object): The Proxmox API client instance used to interact with the Proxmox cluster.
+            proxlb_data (dict): A dictionary containing data related to the ProxLB load balancing configuration.
+            guest_name (str): The name of the guest CT to be migrated.
+        Raises:
+            proxmox_api.core.ResourceException: If an error occurs during the migration process.
+        Returns:
+            None
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: exec_rebalancing_ct.")
+        guest_id = proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["id"]
+        guest_node_current = proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["node_current"]
+        guest_node_target = proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["node_target"]
+
+        try:
+            logger.info(f"Balancing: Starting to migrate CT guest {guest_name} from {guest_node_current} to {guest_node_target}.")
+            job_id = proxmox_api.nodes(guest_node_current).lxc(guest_id).migrate().post(target=guest_node_target, restart=1)
+        except proxmoxer.core.ResourceException as proxmox_api_error:
+            logger.critical(f"Balancing: Failed to migrate guest {guest_name} of type CT due to some Proxmox errors. Please check if resource is locked or similar.")
+            logger.debug(f"Balancing: Failed to migrate guest {guest_name} of type CT due to some Proxmox errors: {proxmox_api_error}")
+        logger.debug("Finished: exec_rebalancing_ct.")
+        return job_id
+
+    def get_rebalancing_job_status(self, proxmox_api: any, proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any], guest_name: str, guest_current_node: str, job_id: int, retry_counter: int = 1) -> bool:
+        """
+        Monitors the status of a rebalancing job on a Proxmox node until it completes or a timeout is reached.
+
+        Args:
+            proxmox_api (object): The Proxmox API client instance.
+            proxlb_data (dict): The ProxLB configuration data.
+            guest_name (str): The name of the guest (virtual machine) being rebalanced.
+            guest_current_node (str): The current node where the guest is running.
+            job_id (str): The ID of the rebalancing job to monitor.
+            retry_counter (int, optional): The current retry count. Defaults to 1.
+
+        Returns:
+            bool: True if the job completed successfully, False otherwise.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_rebalancing_job_status.")
+        job = proxmox_api.nodes(guest_current_node).tasks(job_id).status().get()
+
+        # Watch job id until it finalizes
+        if job["status"] == "running":
+            # Do not hammer the API while
+            # watching the job status
+            time.sleep(10)
+            retry_counter += 1
+
+            # Run recursion until we hit the soft-limit of maximum migration time for a guest
+            if retry_counter < proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("max_job_validation", 1800):
+                logger.debug(f"Balancing: Job ID {job_id} (guest: {guest_name}) for migration is still running... (Run: {retry_counter})")
+                self.get_rebalancing_job_status(proxmox_api, proxlb_data, guest_name, guest_current_node, job_id, retry_counter)
+            else:
+                logger.warning(f"Balancing: Job ID {job_id} (guest: {guest_name}) for migration took too long. Please check manually.")
+                logger.debug("Finished: get_rebalancing_job_status.")
+                return False
+
+        # Validate job output for errors when finished
+        if job["status"] == "stopped":
+
+            if job["exitstatus"] == "OK":
+                logger.debug(f"Balancing: Job ID {job_id} (guest: {guest_name}) was successfully.")
+                logger.debug("Finished: get_rebalancing_job_status.")
+                return True
+            else:
+                logger.critical(f"Balancing: Job ID {job_id} (guest: {guest_name}) went into an error! Please check manually.")
+                logger.debug("Finished: get_rebalancing_job_status.")
+                return False

proxlb/models/calculations.py

@@ -0,0 +1,389 @@
+"""
+The Calculations class is responsible for handling the balancing of virtual machines (VMs)
+and containers (CTs) across all available nodes in a Proxmox cluster. It provides methods
+to calculate the optimal distribution of VMs and CTs based on the provided data.
+"""
+
+
+__author__ = "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy>"
+__copyright__ = "Copyright (C) 2025 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg (@gyptazy)"
+__license__ = "GPL-3.0"
+
+
+import sys
+from typing import Dict, Any
+from utils.logger import SystemdLogger
+
+logger = SystemdLogger()
+
+
+class Calculations:
+    """
+    The calculation class is responsible for handling the balancing of virtual machines (VMs)
+    and containers (CTs) across all available nodes in a Proxmox cluster. It provides methods
+    to calculate the optimal distribution of VMs and CTs based on the provided data.
+
+    Methods:
+    __init__(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]):
+        Initializes the Calculation class with the provided ProxLB data.
+
+    set_node_assignments(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        Sets the assigned resources of the nodes based on the current assigned
+        guest resources by their created groups as an initial base.
+
+    get_balanciness(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        Gets the balanciness for further actions where the highest and lowest
+        usage or assignments of Proxmox nodes are compared.
+
+    get_most_free_node(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any], return_node: bool = False) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        Gets the name of the Proxmox node in the cluster with the most free resources based on
+        the user-defined method (e.g., memory) and mode (e.g., used).
+
+    relocate_guests_on_maintenance_nodes(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]):
+        Relocates guests that are currently on nodes marked for maintenance to
+        nodes with the most available resources.
+
+    relocate_guests(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]):
+        Relocates guests within the provided data structure to ensure affinity groups are
+        placed on nodes with the most free resources.
+
+    val_anti_affinity(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any], guest_name: str):
+        Validates and assigns nodes to guests based on anti-affinity rules.
+
+    update_node_resources(proxlb_data):
+        Updates the resource allocation and usage statistics for nodes when a guest
+        is moved from one node to another.
+    """
+
+    def __init__(self, proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]):
+        """
+        Initializes the Calculation class with the provided ProxLB data.
+
+        Args:
+            proxlb_data (Dict[str, Any]): The data required for balancing VMs and CTs.
+        """
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def set_node_assignments(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        """
+        Set the assigned resources of the nodes based on the current assigned
+        guest resources by their created groups as an initial base.
+
+        Args:
+            proxlb_data (Dict[str, Any]): The data holding all current statistics.
+
+        Returns:
+            Dict[str, Any]: Updated ProxLB data of nodes section with updated node assigned values.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: set_node_assignments.")
+        for group_name, group_meta in proxlb_data["groups"]["affinity"].items():
+
+            for guest_name in group_meta["guests"]:
+                guest_node_current = proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["node_current"]
+                # Update Hardware assignments
+                # Update assigned values for the current node
+                logger.debug(f"set_node_assignment of guest {guest_name} on node {guest_node_current} with cpu_total: {proxlb_data['guests'][guest_name]['cpu_total']}, memory_total: {proxlb_data['guests'][guest_name]['memory_total']}, disk_total: {proxlb_data['guests'][guest_name]['disk_total']}.")
+                proxlb_data["nodes"][guest_node_current]["cpu_assigned"] += proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["cpu_total"]
+                proxlb_data["nodes"][guest_node_current]["memory_assigned"] += proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["memory_total"]
+                proxlb_data["nodes"][guest_node_current]["disk_assigned"] += proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["disk_total"]
+                # Update assigned percentage values for the current node
+                proxlb_data["nodes"][guest_node_current]["cpu_assigned_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][guest_node_current]["cpu_assigned"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][guest_node_current]["cpu_total"] * 100
+                proxlb_data["nodes"][guest_node_current]["memory_assigned_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][guest_node_current]["memory_assigned"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][guest_node_current]["memory_total"] * 100
+                proxlb_data["nodes"][guest_node_current]["disk_assigned_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][guest_node_current]["disk_assigned"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][guest_node_current]["disk_total"] * 100
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: set_node_assignments.")
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_balanciness(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        """
+        Get the blanaciness for further actions where the highest and lowest
+        usage or assignments of Proxmox nodes are compared. Based on the users
+        provided balanciness delta the balancing will be performed.
+
+        Args:
+            proxlb_data (Dict[str, Any]): The data holding all content of all objects.
+        Returns:
+            Dict[str, Any]: Updated meta data section of the balanciness action defined
+                  as a bool.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_balanciness.")
+        proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"]["balance"] = False
+
+        if len(proxlb_data["groups"]) > 0:
+            method = proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("method", "memory")
+            mode = proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("mode", "used")
+            balanciness = proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("balanciness", 10)
+            method_value = [node_meta[f"{method}_{mode}_percent"] for node_meta in proxlb_data["nodes"].values()]
+            method_value_highest = max(method_value)
+            method_value_lowest = min(method_value)
+
+            if method_value_highest - method_value_lowest > balanciness:
+                proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"]["balance"] = True
+                logger.debug(f"Guest balancing is required. Highest value: {method_value_highest}, lowest value: {method_value_lowest} balanced by {method} and {mode}.")
+            else:
+                logger.debug(f"Guest balancing is ok. Highest value: {method_value_highest}, lowest value: {method_value_lowest} balanced by {method} and {mode}.")
+
+        else:
+            logger.warning("No guests for balancing found.")
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_balanciness.")
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_most_free_node(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any], return_node: bool = False, guest_node_relation_list: list = []) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        """
+        Get the name of the Proxmox node in the cluster with the most free resources based on
+        the user defined method (e.g.: memory) and mode (e.g.: used).
+
+        Args:
+            proxlb_data (Dict[str, Any]): The data holding all content of all objects.
+            return_node (bool): The indicator to simply return the best node for further
+                                assignments.
+            guest_node_relation_list (list): A list of nodes that have a tag on the given
+                                             guest relationship for pinning.
+
+        Returns:
+            Dict[str, Any]: Updated meta data section of the node with the most free resources that should
+                  be used for the next balancing action.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_most_free_node.")
+        proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"]["balance_next_node"] = ""
+
+        # Filter and exclude nodes that are in maintenance mode
+        filtered_nodes = [node for node in proxlb_data["nodes"].values() if not node["maintenance"]]
+
+        # Filter and include nodes that given by a relationship between guest and node. This is only
+        # used if the guest has a relationship to a node defined by "pin" tags.
+        if len(guest_node_relation_list) > 0:
+            filtered_nodes = [node for node in proxlb_data["nodes"].values() if node["name"] in guest_node_relation_list]
+
+        # Filter by the defined methods and modes for balancing
+        method = proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("method", "memory")
+        mode = proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("mode", "used")
+        lowest_usage_node = min(filtered_nodes, key=lambda x: x[f"{method}_{mode}_percent"])
+        proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"]["balance_reason"] = 'resources'
+        proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"]["balance_next_node"] = lowest_usage_node["name"]
+
+        # If executed to simply get the best node for further usage, we return
+        # the best node on stdout and gracefully exit here
+        if return_node:
+            print(lowest_usage_node["name"])
+            sys.exit(0)
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_most_free_node.")
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def relocate_guests_on_maintenance_nodes(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]):
+        """
+        Relocates guests that are currently on nodes marked for maintenance to
+        nodes with the most available resources.
+
+        This function iterates over all guests on maintenance nodes and attempts
+        to relocate them to nodes with the most free resources that are not in
+        maintenance mode. It updates the node resources accordingly and logs
+        warnings if the balancing may not be perfect due to the maintenance
+        status of the original node.
+
+        Args:
+            proxlb_data (Dict[str, Any]): The data holding all content of all objects.
+        Returns:
+        None
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_most_free_node.")
+        proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"]["balance_next_guest"] = ""
+
+        for guest_name in proxlb_data["groups"]["maintenance"]:
+            # Update the node with the most free nodes which is
+            # not in a maintenance
+            proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"]["balance_next_guest"] = guest_name
+            Calculations.get_most_free_node(proxlb_data)
+            Calculations.update_node_resources(proxlb_data)
+            logger.warning(f"Warning: Balancing may not be perfect because guest {guest_name} was located on a node which is in maintenance mode.")
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_most_free_node.")
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def relocate_guests(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]):
+        """
+        Relocates guests within the provided data structure to ensure affinity groups are
+        placed on nodes with the most free resources.
+
+        This function iterates over each affinity group in the provided data, identifies
+        the node with the most free resources, and migrates all guests within the group
+        to that node. It updates the node resources accordingly.
+
+        Args:
+            proxlb_data (Dict[str, Any]): The data holding all content of all objects.
+        Returns:
+        None
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: relocate_guests.")
+        if proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"]["balance"] or proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("enforce_affinity", False):
+
+            if proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("balance", False):
+                logger.debug("Balancing of guests will be performed. Reason: balanciness")
+
+            if proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"].get("enforce_affinity", False):
+                logger.debug("Balancing of guests will be performed. Reason: enforce affinity balancing")
+
+            for group_name in proxlb_data["groups"]["affinity"]:
+
+                # We get initially the node with the most free resources and then
+                # migrate all guests within the group to that node to ensure the
+                # affinity.
+                Calculations.get_most_free_node(proxlb_data)
+
+                for guest_name in proxlb_data["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["guests"]:
+                    proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"]["balance_next_guest"] = guest_name
+                    Calculations.val_anti_affinity(proxlb_data, guest_name)
+                    Calculations.val_node_relationships(proxlb_data, guest_name)
+                    Calculations.update_node_resources(proxlb_data)
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: relocate_guests.")
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def val_anti_affinity(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any], guest_name: str):
+        """
+        Validates and assigns nodes to guests based on anti-affinity rules.
+
+        This function iterates over all defined anti-affinity groups in the provided
+        `proxlb_data` and checks if the specified `guest_name` is included in any of
+        these groups. If the guest is included and has not been processed yet, it
+        attempts to assign an unused and non-maintenance node to the guest, ensuring
+        that the anti-affinity rules are respected.
+
+        Parameters:
+        proxlb_data (Dict[str, Any]): The data holding all content of all objects.
+        guest_name (str): The name of the guest to be validated and assigned a node.
+
+        Returns:
+        None
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: val_anti_affinity.")
+        # Start by iterating over all defined anti-affinity groups
+        for group_name in proxlb_data["groups"]["anti_affinity"].keys():
+
+            # Validate if the provided guest is included in the anti-affinity group
+            if guest_name in proxlb_data["groups"]["anti_affinity"][group_name]['guests'] and not proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["processed"]:
+                logger.debug(f"Anti-Affinity: Guest: {guest_name} is included in anti-affinity group: {group_name}.")
+
+                # Iterate over all available nodes
+                for node_name in proxlb_data["nodes"].keys():
+
+                    # Only select node if it was not used before and is not in a
+                    # maintenance mode. Afterwards, add it to the list of already
+                    # used nodes for the current anti-affinity group
+                    if node_name not in proxlb_data["groups"]["anti_affinity"][group_name]["used_nodes"]:
+
+                        if not proxlb_data["nodes"][node_name]["maintenance"]:
+                            # If the node has not been used yet, we assign this node to the guest
+                            proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"]["balance_next_node"] = node_name
+                            proxlb_data["groups"]["anti_affinity"][group_name]["used_nodes"].append(node_name)
+                            logger.debug(f"Node: {node_name} marked as used for anti-affinity group: {group_name} with guest {guest_name}")
+                            break
+
+                    else:
+                        logger.critical(f"Node: {node_name} already got used for anti-affinity group:: {group_name}. (Tried for guest: {guest_name})")
+
+            else:
+                logger.debug(f"Guest: {guest_name} is not included in anti-affinity group: {group_name}. Skipping.")
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: val_anti_affinity.")
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def val_node_relationships(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any], guest_name: str):
+        """
+        Validates and assigns guests to nodes based on defined relationships based on tags.
+
+        Parameters:
+        proxlb_data (Dict[str, Any]): The data holding all content of all objects.
+        guest_name (str): The name of the guest to be validated and assigned a node.
+
+        Returns:
+        None
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: val_node_relationships.")
+        proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["processed"] = True
+
+        if len(proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["node_relationships"]) > 0:
+            logger.debug(f"Guest '{guest_name}' has relationships defined to node(s): {','.join(proxlb_data['guests'][guest_name]['node_relationships'])}. Pinning to node.")
+
+            # Get the node with the most free resources of the group
+            guest_node_relation_list = proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["node_relationships"]
+            Calculations.get_most_free_node(proxlb_data, False, guest_node_relation_list)
+
+            # Validate if the specified node name is really part of the cluster
+            if proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"]["balance_next_node"] in proxlb_data["nodes"].keys():
+                logger.debug(f"Guest '{guest_name}' has a specific relationship defined to node: {proxlb_data['meta']['balancing']['balance_next_node']} is a known hypervisor node in the cluster.")
+            else:
+                logger.warning(f"Guest '{guest_name}' has a specific relationship defined to node: {proxlb_data['meta']['balancing']['balance_next_node']} but this node name is not known in the cluster!")
+
+        else:
+            logger.debug(f"Guest '{guest_name}' does not have any specific node relationships.")
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: val_node_relationships.")
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def update_node_resources(proxlb_data):
+        """
+        Updates the resource allocation and usage statistics for nodes when a guest
+        is moved from one node to another.
+
+        Parameters:
+        proxlb_data (dict): A dictionary containing information about the nodes and
+        guests, including their resource allocations and usage.
+
+        The function performs the following steps:
+        1. Retrieves the guest name, current node, and target node from the provided data.
+        2. Updates the resource allocations and usage statistics for the target node by
+           adding the resources of the moved guest.
+        3. Updates the resource allocations and usage statistics for the current node by
+           subtracting the resources of the moved guest.
+        4. Logs the start and end of the resource update process, as well as the movement
+           of the guest from the current node to the target node.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: update_node_resources.")
+        guest_name = proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"]["balance_next_guest"]
+        node_current = proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["node_current"]
+        node_target = proxlb_data["meta"]["balancing"]["balance_next_node"]
+
+        # Update resources for the target node by the moved guest resources
+        # Add assigned resources to the target node
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["cpu_assigned"] += proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["cpu_total"]
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["memory_assigned"] += proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["memory_total"]
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["disk_assigned"] += proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["disk_total"]
+        # Update the assigned percentages of assigned resources for the target node
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["cpu_assigned_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["cpu_assigned"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["cpu_total"] * 100
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["memory_assigned_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["memory_assigned"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["memory_total"] * 100
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["disk_assigned_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["disk_assigned"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["disk_total"] * 100
+        # Add used resources to the target node
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["cpu_used"] += proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["cpu_used"]
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["memory_used"] += proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["memory_used"]
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["disk_used"] += proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["disk_used"]
+        # Update the used percentages of usage resources for the target node
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["cpu_used_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["cpu_used"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["cpu_total"] * 100
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["memory_used_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["memory_used"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["memory_total"] * 100
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["disk_used_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["disk_used"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][node_target]["disk_total"] * 100
+
+        # Update resources for the current node by the moved guest resources
+        # Add assigned resources to the target node
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["cpu_assigned"] -= proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["cpu_total"]
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["memory_assigned"] -= proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["memory_total"]
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["disk_assigned"] -= proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["disk_total"]
+        # Update the assigned percentages of assigned resources for the target node
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["cpu_assigned_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["cpu_assigned"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["cpu_total"] * 100
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["memory_assigned_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["memory_assigned"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["memory_total"] * 100
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["disk_assigned_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["disk_assigned"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["disk_total"] * 100
+        # Add used resources to the target node
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["cpu_used"] -= proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["cpu_used"]
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["memory_used"] -= proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["memory_used"]
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["disk_used"] -= proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["disk_used"]
+        # Update the used percentages of usage resources for the target node
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["cpu_used_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["cpu_used"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["cpu_total"] * 100
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["memory_used_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["memory_used"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["memory_total"] * 100
+        proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["disk_used_percent"] = proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["disk_used"] / proxlb_data["nodes"][node_current]["disk_total"] * 100
+
+        # Assign guest to the new target node
+        proxlb_data["guests"][guest_name]["node_target"] = node_target
+        logger.debug(f"Set guest {guest_name} from node {node_current} to node {node_target}.")
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: update_node_resources.")

proxlb/models/groups.py

@@ -0,0 +1,124 @@
+"""
+The Groups class is responsible for handling the correlations between the guests
+and their groups, such as affinity and anti-affinity groups. It ensures proper balancing
+by grouping guests and evaluating them for further balancing. The class provides methods
+to initialize with ProxLB data and to generate groups based on guest and node data.
+"""
+
+__author__ = "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy>"
+__copyright__ = "Copyright (C) 2025 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg (@gyptazy)"
+__license__ = "GPL-3.0"
+
+
+from typing import Dict, Any
+from utils.logger import SystemdLogger
+from utils.helper import Helper
+
+logger = SystemdLogger()
+
+
+class Groups:
+    """
+    The groups class is responsible for handling the correlations between the guests
+    and their groups like affinity and anti-affinity groups. To ensure a proper balancing
+    guests will ge grouped and then evaluated for further balancing.
+
+    Methods:
+        __init__(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]):
+            Initializes the Groups class.
+
+        get_groups(guests: Dict[str, Any], nodes: Dict[str, Any]) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+            Generates and returns a dictionary of affinity and anti-affinity groups
+            based on the provided data.
+    """
+
+    def __init__(self, proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any]):
+        """
+        Initializes the Groups class with the provided ProxLB data.
+
+        Args:
+            proxlb_data (Dict[str, Any]): The data required for balancing VMs and CTs.
+        """
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_groups(guests: Dict[str, Any], nodes: Dict[str, Any]) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        """
+        Generates and returns a dictionary of affinity and anti-affinity groups based on the provided data.
+
+        Args:
+            guests (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing the guest data.
+            nodes  (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing the nodes data.
+
+        Returns:
+            Dict[str, Any]: A dictionary containing the created groups that includes:
+                            * Affinity groups (or a randon and uniq group)
+                            * Anti-affinity groups
+                            * A list of guests that are currently placed on a node which
+                              is defined to be in maintenance.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_groups.")
+        groups = {'groups': {'affinity': {}, 'anti_affinity': {}, 'maintenance': []}}
+
+        for guest_name, guest_meta in guests["guests"].items():
+            # Create affinity grouping
+            # Use an affinity group if available for the guest
+            if len(guest_meta["affinity_groups"]) > 0:
+                for affinity_group in guest_meta["affinity_groups"]:
+                    group_name = affinity_group
+                    logger.debug(f'Affinity group {affinity_group} for {guest_name} will be used.')
+            else:
+                # Generate a random uniq group name for the guest if
+                # the guest does not belong to any affinity group
+                random_group = Helper.get_uuid_string()
+                group_name = random_group
+                logger.debug(f'Random uniq group {random_group} for {guest_name} will be used.')
+
+            if not groups["groups"]["affinity"].get(group_name, False):
+                # Create group template with initial guest meta information
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name] = {}
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["guests"] = []
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["guests"].append(guest_name)
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["counter"] = 1
+                # Create groups resource template by the guests resources
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["cpu_total"] = guest_meta["cpu_total"]
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["cpu_used"] = guest_meta["cpu_used"]
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["memory_total"] = guest_meta["memory_total"]
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["memory_used"] = guest_meta["cpu_used"]
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["disk_total"] = guest_meta["disk_total"]
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["disk_used"] = guest_meta["cpu_used"]
+            else:
+                # Update group templates by guest meta information
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["guests"].append(guest_name)
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["counter"] += 1
+                # Update group resources by guest resources
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["cpu_total"] += guest_meta["cpu_total"]
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["cpu_used"] += guest_meta["cpu_used"]
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["memory_total"] += guest_meta["memory_total"]
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["memory_used"] += guest_meta["cpu_used"]
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["disk_total"] += guest_meta["disk_total"]
+                groups["groups"]["affinity"][group_name]["disk_used"] += guest_meta["cpu_used"]
+
+            # Create anti-affinity grouping
+            if len(guest_meta["anti_affinity_groups"]) > 0:
+                for anti_affinity_group in guest_meta["anti_affinity_groups"]:
+                    anti_affinity_group_name = anti_affinity_group
+                    logger.debug(f'Anti-affinity group {anti_affinity_group_name} for {guest_name} will be used.')
+
+                    if not groups["groups"]["anti_affinity"].get(anti_affinity_group_name, False):
+                        groups["groups"]["anti_affinity"][anti_affinity_group_name] = {}
+                        groups["groups"]["anti_affinity"][anti_affinity_group_name]["guests"] = []
+                        groups["groups"]["anti_affinity"][anti_affinity_group_name]["guests"].append(guest_name)
+                        groups["groups"]["anti_affinity"][anti_affinity_group_name]["counter"] = 1
+                        groups["groups"]["anti_affinity"][anti_affinity_group_name]["used_nodes"] = []
+                    else:
+                        groups["groups"]["anti_affinity"][anti_affinity_group_name]["guests"].append(guest_name)
+                        groups["groups"]["anti_affinity"][anti_affinity_group_name]["counter"] += 1
+
+            # Create grouping of guests that are currently located on nodes that are
+            # marked as in maintenance and must be migrated
+            if nodes["nodes"][guest_meta["node_current"]]["maintenance"]:
+                logger.debug(f'{guest_name} will be migrated to another node because the underlying node {guest_meta["node_current"]} is defined to be in maintenance.')
+                groups["groups"]["maintenance"].append(guest_name)
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_groups.")
+        return groups

proxlb/models/guests.py

@@ -0,0 +1,153 @@
+"""
+The Guests class retrieves all running guests on the Proxmox cluster across all available nodes.
+It handles both VM and CT guest types, collecting their resource metrics.
+"""
+
+__author__ = "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy>"
+__copyright__ = "Copyright (C) 2025 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg (@gyptazy)"
+__license__ = "GPL-3.0"
+
+
+from typing import Dict, Any
+from utils.logger import SystemdLogger
+from models.tags import Tags
+import time
+
+logger = SystemdLogger()
+
+
+class Guests:
+    """
+    The Guests class retrieves all running guests on the Proxmox cluster across all available nodes.
+    It handles both VM and CT guest types, collecting their resource metrics.
+
+    Methods:
+        __init__:
+            Initializes the Guests class.
+
+        get_guests(proxmox_api: any, nodes: Dict[str, Any]) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+            Retrieves metrics for all running guests (both VMs and CTs) across all nodes in the Proxmox cluster.
+            It collects resource metrics such as CPU, memory, and disk usage, as well as tags and affinity/anti-affinity groups.
+    """
+    def __init__(self):
+        """
+        Initializes the Guests class with the provided ProxLB data.
+        """
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_guests(proxmox_api: any, nodes: Dict[str, Any], meta: Dict[str, Any]) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        """
+        Get metrics of all guests in a Proxmox cluster.
+
+        This method retrieves metrics for all running guests (both VMs and CTs) across all nodes in the Proxmox cluster.
+        It iterates over each node and collects resource metrics for each running guest, including CPU, memory, and disk usage.
+        Additionally, it retrieves tags and affinity/anti-affinity groups for each guest.
+
+        Args:
+            proxmox_api (any): The Proxmox API client instance.
+            nodes (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing information about the nodes in the Proxmox cluster.
+
+        Returns:
+            Dict[str, Any]: A dictionary containing metrics and information for all running guests.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_guests.")
+        guests = {"guests": {}}
+
+        # Guest objects are always only in the scope of a node.
+        # Therefore, we need to iterate over all nodes to get all guests.
+        for node in nodes['nodes'].keys():
+
+            # VM objects: Iterate over all VMs on the current node by the qemu API object.
+            # Unlike the nodes we need to keep them even when being ignored to create proper
+            # resource metrics for rebalancing to ensure that we do not overprovisiong the node.
+            for guest in proxmox_api.nodes(node).qemu.get():
+                if guest['status'] == 'running':
+
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']] = {}
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['name'] = guest['name']
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['cpu_total'] = int(guest['cpus'])
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['cpu_used'] = Guests.get_guest_cpu_usage(proxmox_api, node, guest['vmid'], guest['name'])
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['memory_total'] = guest['maxmem']
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['memory_used'] = guest['mem']
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['disk_total'] = guest['maxdisk']
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['disk_used'] = guest['disk']
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['id'] = guest['vmid']
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['node_current'] = node
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['node_target'] = node
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['processed'] = False
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['tags'] = Tags.get_tags_from_guests(proxmox_api, node, guest['vmid'], 'vm')
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['affinity_groups'] = Tags.get_affinity_groups(guests['guests'][guest['name']]['tags'])
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['anti_affinity_groups'] = Tags.get_anti_affinity_groups(guests['guests'][guest['name']]['tags'])
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['ignore'] = Tags.get_ignore(guests['guests'][guest['name']]['tags'])
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['node_relationships'] = Tags.get_node_relationships(guests['guests'][guest['name']]['tags'])
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['type'] = 'vm'
+
+                    logger.debug(f"Resources of Guest {guest['name']} (type VM) added: {guests['guests'][guest['name']]}")
+                else:
+                    logger.debug(f'Metric for VM {guest["name"]} ignored because VM is not running.')
+
+            # CT objects: Iterate over all VMs on the current node by the lxc API object.
+            # Unlike the nodes we need to keep them even when being ignored to create proper
+            # resource metrics for rebalancing to ensure that we do not overprovisiong the node.
+            for guest in proxmox_api.nodes(node).lxc.get():
+                if guest['status'] == 'running':
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']] = {}
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['name'] = guest['name']
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['cpu_total'] = int(guest['cpus'])
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['cpu_used'] = Guests.get_guest_cpu_usage(proxmox_api, node, guest['vmid'], guest['name'])
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['memory_total'] = guest['maxmem']
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['memory_used'] = guest['mem']
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['disk_total'] = guest['maxdisk']
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['disk_used'] = guest['disk']
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['id'] = guest['vmid']
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['node_current'] = node
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['node_target'] = node
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['processed'] = False
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['tags'] = Tags.get_tags_from_guests(proxmox_api, node, guest['vmid'], 'ct')
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['affinity_groups'] = Tags.get_affinity_groups(guests['guests'][guest['name']]['tags'])
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['anti_affinity_groups'] = Tags.get_anti_affinity_groups(guests['guests'][guest['name']]['tags'])
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['ignore'] = Tags.get_ignore(guests['guests'][guest['name']]['tags'])
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['node_relationships'] = Tags.get_node_relationships(guests['guests'][guest['name']]['tags'])
+                    guests['guests'][guest['name']]['type'] = 'ct'
+
+                    logger.debug(f"Resources of Guest {guest['name']} (type CT) added: {guests['guests'][guest['name']]}")
+                else:
+                    logger.debug(f'Metric for CT {guest["name"]} ignored because CT is not running.')
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_guests.")
+        return guests
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_guest_cpu_usage(proxmox_api, node_name: str, vm_id: int, vm_name: str) -> float:
+        """
+        Retrieve the average CPU usage of a guest instance (VM/CT) over the past hour.
+
+        This method queries the Proxmox VE API for RRD (Round-Robin Database) data
+        related to CPU usage of a specific guest instance and calculates the average CPU usage
+        over the last hour using the "AVERAGE" consolidation function.
+
+        Args:
+            proxmox_api: An instance of the Proxmox API client.
+            node_name (str): The name of the Proxmox node hosting the VM.
+            vm_id (int): The unique identifier of the guest instance (VM/CT).
+            vm_name (str): The name of the guest instance (VM/CT).
+
+        Returns:
+            float: The average CPU usage as a fraction (0.0 to 1.0) over the past hour.
+                   Returns 0.0 if no data is available.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_guest_cpu_usage.")
+        time.sleep(0.1)
+
+        try:
+            logger.debug(f"Getting RRD dara for guest: {vm_name}.")
+            guest_data_rrd = proxmox_api.nodes(node_name).qemu(vm_id).rrddata.get(timeframe="hour", cf="AVERAGE")
+        except Exception:
+            logger.error(f"Failed to retrieve RRD data for guest: {vm_name} (ID: {vm_id}) on node: {node_name}. Using 0.0 as CPU usage.")
+            logger.debug("Finished: get_guest_cpu_usage.")
+            return 0.0
+
+        cpu_usage = sum(entry.get("cpu", 0.0) for entry in guest_data_rrd) / len(guest_data_rrd)
+        logger.debug(f"CPU RRD data for guest: {vm_name}: {cpu_usage}")
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_guest_cpu_usage.")
+        return cpu_usage

proxlb/models/nodes.py

@@ -0,0 +1,155 @@
+"""
+The Nodes class retrieves all running nodes in a Proxmox cluster
+and collects their resource metrics.
+
+Methods:
+    __init__:
+        Initializes the Nodes class.
+
+    get_nodes(proxmox_api: any, proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any]) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        Gets metrics of all nodes in a Proxmox cluster.
+
+    set_node_maintenance(proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any], node_name: str) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        Sets Proxmox nodes to a maintenance mode if required.
+
+    set_node_ignore(proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any], node_name: str) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        Sets Proxmox nodes to be ignored if requested.
+"""
+
+__author__ = "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy>"
+__copyright__ = "Copyright (C) 2025 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg (@gyptazy)"
+__license__ = "GPL-3.0"
+
+
+from typing import Dict, Any
+from utils.logger import SystemdLogger
+
+logger = SystemdLogger()
+
+
+class Nodes:
+    """
+    The Nodes class retrieves all running nodes in a Proxmox cluster
+    and collects their resource metrics.
+    """
+    def __init__(self):
+        """
+        Initializes the Nodes class with the provided ProxLB data.
+        """
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_nodes(proxmox_api: any, proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any]) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        """
+        Get metrics of all nodes in a Proxmox cluster.
+
+        This method retrieves metrics for all available nodes in the Proxmox cluster.
+        It iterates over each node and collects resource metrics including CPU, memory, and disk usage.
+
+        Args:
+            proxmox_api (any): The Proxmox API client instance.
+            nodes (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing information about the nodes in the Proxmox cluster.
+
+        Returns:
+            Dict[str, Any]: A dictionary containing metrics and information for all running nodes.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_nodes.")
+        nodes = {"nodes": {}}
+
+        for node in proxmox_api.nodes.get():
+            # Ignoring a node results into ignoring all placed guests on the ignored node!
+            if node["status"] == "online" and not Nodes.set_node_ignore(proxlb_config, node["node"]):
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]] = {}
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["name"] = node["node"]
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["maintenance"] = False
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["cpu_total"] = node["maxcpu"]
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["cpu_assigned"] = 0
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["cpu_used"] = node["cpu"] * node["maxcpu"]
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["cpu_free"] = (node["maxcpu"]) - (node["cpu"] * node["maxcpu"])
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["cpu_assigned_percent"] = nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["cpu_assigned"] / nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["cpu_total"] * 100
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["cpu_free_percent"] = nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["cpu_free"] / node["maxcpu"] * 100
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["cpu_used_percent"] = nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["cpu_used"] / node["maxcpu"] * 100
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["memory_total"] = node["maxmem"]
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["memory_assigned"] = 0
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["memory_used"] = node["mem"]
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["memory_free"] = node["maxmem"] - node["mem"]
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["memory_assigned_percent"] = nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["memory_assigned"] / nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["memory_total"] * 100
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["memory_free_percent"] = nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["memory_free"] / node["maxmem"] * 100
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["memory_used_percent"] = nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["memory_used"] / node["maxmem"] * 100
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["disk_total"] = node["maxdisk"]
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["disk_assigned"] = 0
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["disk_used"] = node["disk"]
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["disk_free"] = node["maxdisk"] - node["disk"]
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["disk_assigned_percent"] = nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["disk_assigned"] / nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["disk_total"] * 100
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["disk_free_percent"] = nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["disk_free"] / node["maxdisk"] * 100
+                nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["disk_used_percent"] = nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["disk_used"] / node["maxdisk"] * 100
+
+                # Evaluate if node should be set to maintenance mode
+                if Nodes.set_node_maintenance(proxmox_api, proxlb_config, node["node"]):
+                    nodes["nodes"][node["node"]]["maintenance"] = True
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_nodes.")
+        return nodes
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def set_node_maintenance(proxmox_api, proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any], node_name: str) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        """
+        Set nodes to maintenance mode based on the provided configuration.
+
+        This method updates the nodes dictionary to mark certain nodes as being in maintenance mode
+        based on the configuration provided in proxlb_config.
+
+        Args:
+            proxmox_api (any): The Proxmox API client instance.
+            proxlb_config (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing the ProxLB configuration, including maintenance nodes.
+            node_name: (str): The current node name within the outer iteration.
+
+        Returns:
+            Bool: Returns a bool if the provided node name is present in the maintenance section of the config file.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: set_node_maintenance.")
+
+        # Evaluate maintenance mode by config
+        if proxlb_config.get("proxmox_cluster", None).get("maintenance_nodes", None) is not None:
+            if len(proxlb_config.get("proxmox_cluster", {}).get("maintenance_nodes", [])) > 0:
+                if node_name in proxlb_config.get("proxmox_cluster", {}).get("maintenance_nodes", []):
+                    logger.info(f"Node: {node_name} has been set to maintenance mode (by ProxLB config).")
+                    return True
+                else:
+                    logger.debug(f"Node: {node_name} is not in maintenance mode by ProxLB config.")
+
+        # Evaluate maintenance mode by Proxmox HA
+        for ha_element in proxmox_api.cluster.ha.status.current.get():
+            if ha_element.get("status"):
+                if "maintenance mode" in ha_element.get("status"):
+                    if ha_element.get("node") == node_name:
+                        logger.info(f"Node: {node_name} has been set to maintenance mode (by Proxmox HA API).")
+                        return True
+                    else:
+                        logger.debug(f"Node: {node_name} is not in maintenance mode by Proxmox HA API.")
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: set_node_maintenance.")
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def set_node_ignore(proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any], node_name: str) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        """
+        Set nodes to be ignored based on the provided configuration.
+
+        This method updates the nodes dictionary to mark certain nodes as being ignored
+        based on the configuration provided in proxlb_config.
+
+        Args:
+            proxlb_config (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing the ProxLB configuration, including maintenance nodes.
+            node_name: (str): The current node name within the outer iteration.
+
+        Returns:
+            Bool: Returns a bool if the provided node name is present in the ignore section of the config file.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: set_node_ignore.")
+
+        if proxlb_config.get("proxmox_cluster", None).get("ignore_nodes", None) is not None:
+            if len(proxlb_config.get("proxmox_cluster", {}).get("ignore_nodes", [])) > 0:
+                if node_name in proxlb_config.get("proxmox_cluster", {}).get("ignore_nodes", []):
+                    logger.info(f"Node: {node_name} has been set to be ignored. Not adding node!")
+                    return True
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: set_node_ignore.")

proxlb/models/tags.py

@@ -0,0 +1,180 @@
+"""
+The Tags class retrieves and processes tags from guests of type VM or CT running
+in a Proxmox cluster. It provides methods to fetch tags from the Proxmox API and
+evaluate them for affinity, anti-affinity, and ignore tags, which are used during
+balancing calculations.
+"""
+
+__author__ = "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy>"
+__copyright__ = "Copyright (C) 2025 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg (@gyptazy)"
+__license__ = "GPL-3.0"
+
+
+import time
+from typing import List
+from utils.logger import SystemdLogger
+
+logger = SystemdLogger()
+
+
+class Tags:
+    """
+    The Tags class retrieves and processes tags from guests of type VM or CT running
+    in a Proxmox cluster. It provides methods to fetch tags from the Proxmox API and
+    evaluate them for affinity, anti-affinity, and ignore tags, which are used during
+    balancing calculations.
+
+    Methods:
+        __init__:
+            Initializes the Tags class.
+
+        get_tags_from_guests(proxmox_api: any, node: str, guest_id: int, guest_type: str) -> List[str]:
+            Retrieves all tags for a given guest from the Proxmox API.
+
+        get_affinity_groups(tags: List[str]) -> List[str]:
+            Evaluates and returns all affinity tags from the provided list of tags.
+
+        get_anti_affinity_groups(tags: List[str]) -> List[str]:
+            Evaluates and returns all anti-affinity tags from the provided list of tags.
+
+        get_ignore(tags: List[str]) -> bool:
+            Evaluates and returns a boolean indicating whether the guest should be ignored based on the provided list of tags.
+    """
+    def __init__(self):
+        """
+        Initializes the tags class.
+        """
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_tags_from_guests(proxmox_api: any, node: str, guest_id: int, guest_type: str) -> List[str]:
+        """
+        Get tags for a guest from the Proxmox cluster by the API.
+
+        This method retrieves all tags for a given guest from the Proxmox API which
+        is held in the guest_config.
+
+        Args:
+            proxmox_api (any): The Proxmox API client instance.
+            node (str): The node name where the given guest is located.
+            guest_id (int): The internal Proxmox ID of the guest.
+            guest_type (str): The type (vm or ct) of the guest.
+
+        Returns:
+            List: A list of all tags assoiciated with the given guest.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_tags_from_guests.")
+        time.sleep(0.1)
+        if guest_type == 'vm':
+            guest_config = proxmox_api.nodes(node).qemu(guest_id).config.get()
+            tags = guest_config.get("tags", [])
+        if guest_type == 'ct':
+            guest_config = proxmox_api.nodes(node).lxc(guest_id).config.get()
+            tags = guest_config.get("tags", [])
+
+        if isinstance(tags, str):
+            tags = tags.split(";")
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_tags_from_guests.")
+        return tags
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_affinity_groups(tags: List[str]) -> List[str]:
+        """
+        Get affinity tags for a guest from the Proxmox cluster by the API.
+
+        This method retrieves all tags for a given guest and evaluates the
+        affinity tags which are required during the balancing calculations.
+
+        Args:
+            tags (List): A list holding all defined tags for a given guest.
+
+        Returns:
+            List: A list including all affinity tags for the given guest.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_affinity_groups.")
+        affinity_tags = []
+
+        if len(tags) > 0:
+            for tag in tags:
+                if tag.startswith("plb_affinity"):
+                    affinity_tags.append(tag)
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_affinity_groups.")
+        return affinity_tags
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_anti_affinity_groups(tags: List[str]) -> List[str]:
+        """
+        Get anti-affinity tags for a guest from the Proxmox cluster by the API.
+
+        This method retrieves all tags for a given guest and evaluates the
+        anti-affinity tags which are required during the balancing calculations.
+
+        Args:
+            tags (List): A list holding all defined tags for a given guest.
+
+        Returns:
+            List: A list including all anti-affinity tags for the given guest..
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_anti_affinity_groups.")
+        anti_affinity_tags = []
+
+        if len(tags) > 0:
+            for tag in tags:
+                if tag.startswith("plb_anti_affinity"):
+                    anti_affinity_tags.append(tag)
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_anti_affinity_groups.")
+        return anti_affinity_tags
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_ignore(tags: List[str]) -> bool:
+        """
+        Validate for ignore tags of a guest from the Proxmox cluster by the API.
+
+        This method retrieves all tags for a given guest and evaluates the
+        ignore tag which are required during the balancing calculations.
+
+        Args:
+            tags (List): A list holding all defined tags for a given guest.
+
+        Returns:
+            Bool: Returns a bool that indicates whether to ignore a guest or not.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_ignore.")
+        ignore_tag = False
+
+        if len(tags) > 0:
+            for tag in tags:
+                if tag.startswith("plb_ignore"):
+                    ignore_tag = True
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_ignore.")
+        return ignore_tag
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_node_relationships(tags: List[str]) -> str:
+        """
+        Get a node relationship tag for a guest from the Proxmox cluster by the API to pin
+        a guest to a node.
+
+        This method retrieves a relationship tag between a guest and a specific
+        hypervisor node to pin the guest to a specific node (e.g., for licensing reason).
+
+        Args:
+            tags (List): A list holding all defined tags for a given guest.
+
+        Returns:
+            Str: The related hypervisor node name.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_node_relationships.")
+        node_relationship_tags = []
+
+        if len(tags) > 0:
+            for tag in tags:
+                if tag.startswith("plb_pin"):
+                    node_relationship_tag = tag.replace("plb_pin_", "")
+                    node_relationship_tags.append(node_relationship_tag)
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_node_relationships.")
+        return node_relationship_tags

proxlb/utils/cli_parser.py

@@ -0,0 +1,90 @@
+"""
+The CliParser class handles the parsing of command-line interface (CLI) arguments.
+"""
+
+__author__ = "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy>"
+__copyright__ = "Copyright (C) 2025 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg (@gyptazy)"
+__license__ = "GPL-3.0"
+
+
+import argparse
+import utils.version
+from utils.logger import SystemdLogger
+
+logger = SystemdLogger()
+
+
+class CliParser:
+    """
+    The CliParser class handles the parsing of command-line interface (CLI) arguments.
+    """
+    def __init__(self):
+        """
+        Initializes the CliParser class.
+
+        This method sets up an argument parser for the command-line interface (CLI) with various options:
+        - `-c` or `--config`: Specifies the path to the configuration file.
+        - `-d` or `--dry-run`: Performs a dry-run without executing any actions.
+        - `-j` or `--json`: Returns a JSON of the VM movement.
+        - `-b` or `--best-node`: Returns the best next node.
+        - `-v` or `--version`: Returns the current ProxLB version.
+
+        Logs the start and end of the initialization process.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: CliParser.")
+
+        self.parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(
+            description=(
+                f"{utils.version.__app_name__} ({utils.version.__version__}): "
+                f"{utils.version.__app_desc__}"
+            )
+        )
+
+        self.parser.add_argument(
+            "-c", "--config",
+            help="Path to the configuration file",
+            type=str,
+            required=False
+        )
+        self.parser.add_argument(
+            "-d", "--dry-run",
+            help="Perform a dry-run without executing any actions",
+            action="store_true",
+            required=False
+        )
+        self.parser.add_argument(
+            "-j", "--json",
+            help="Return a JSON of the VM movement",
+            action="store_true",
+            required=False
+        )
+        self.parser.add_argument(
+            "-b", "--best-node",
+            help="Returns the best next node",
+            action="store_true",
+            required=False
+        )
+        self.parser.add_argument(
+            "-v", "--version",
+            help="Returns the current ProxLB version",
+            action="store_true",
+            required=False
+        )
+        logger.debug("Finished: CliParser.")
+
+    def parse_args(self) -> argparse.Namespace:
+        """
+        Parses and returns the parsed command-line interface (CLI) arguments.
+
+        This method uses the argparse library to parse the arguments provided
+        via the command line. It logs the start and end of the parsing process,
+        as well as the parsed arguments for debugging purposes.
+
+        Returns:
+            argparse.Namespace: An object containing the parsed CLI arguments.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: parse_args.")
+        logger.debug(self.parser.parse_args())
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: parse_args.")
+        return self.parser.parse_args()

proxlb/utils/config_parser.py

@@ -0,0 +1,96 @@
+"""
+The ConfigParser class handles the parsing of configuration file
+from a given YAML file from any location.
+"""
+
+__author__ = "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy>"
+__copyright__ = "Copyright (C) 2025 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg (@gyptazy)"
+__license__ = "GPL-3.0"
+
+
+import os
+import sys
+try:
+    import yaml
+    PYYAML_PRESENT = True
+except ImportError:
+    PYYAML_PRESENT = False
+from typing import Dict, Any
+from utils.logger import SystemdLogger
+
+
+if not PYYAML_PRESENT:
+    print("Error: The required library 'pyyaml' is not installed.")
+    sys.exit(1)
+
+
+logger = SystemdLogger()
+
+
+class ConfigParser:
+    """
+    The ConfigParser class handles the parsing of a configuration file.
+
+    Methods:
+    __init__(config_path: str)
+
+    test_config_path(config_path: str) -> None
+        Checks if the configuration file is present at the given config path.
+
+    get_config() -> Dict[str, Any]
+        Parses and returns the configuration data from the YAML file.
+    """
+    def __init__(self, config_path: str):
+        """
+        Initializes the configuration file parser and validates the config file.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: ConfigParser.")
+        self.config_path = self.test_config_path(config_path)
+        logger.debug("Finished: ConfigParser.")
+
+    def test_config_path(self, config_path: str) -> None:
+        """
+        Checks if configuration file is present at given config path.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: test_config_path.")
+        # Test for config file at given location
+        if config_path is not None:
+
+            if os.path.exists(config_path):
+                logger.debug(f"The file {config_path} exists.")
+            else:
+                logger.error(f"The file {config_path} does not exist.")
+                sys.exit(1)
+
+        # Test for config file at default location as a fallback
+        if config_path is None:
+            default_config_path = "/etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml"
+
+            if os.path.exists(default_config_path):
+                logger.debug(f"The file {default_config_path} exists.")
+                config_path = default_config_path
+            else:
+                print(f"The config file {default_config_path} does not exist.")
+                logger.critical(f"The config file {default_config_path} does not exist.")
+                sys.exit(1)
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: test_config_path.")
+        return config_path
+
+    def get_config(self) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        """
+        Parses and returns CLI arguments.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_config.")
+        logger.info(f"Using config path: {self.config_path}")
+
+        try:
+            with open(self.config_path, "r", encoding="utf-8") as config_file:
+                config_data = yaml.load(config_file, Loader=yaml.FullLoader)
+            return config_data
+        except yaml.YAMLError as exception_error:
+            print(f"Error loading YAML file: {exception_error}")
+            logger.critical(f"Error loading YAML file: {exception_error}")
+            sys.exit(1)
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_config.")

proxlb/utils/helper.py

@@ -0,0 +1,267 @@
+"""
+The Helper class provides some basic helper functions to not mess up the code in other
+classes.
+"""
+
+__author__ = "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy>"
+__copyright__ = "Copyright (C) 2025 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg (@gyptazy)"
+__license__ = "GPL-3.0"
+
+
+import json
+import uuid
+import re
+import sys
+import time
+import utils.version
+from utils.logger import SystemdLogger
+from typing import Dict, Any
+
+logger = SystemdLogger()
+
+
+class Helper:
+    """
+    The Helper class provides some basic helper functions to not mess up the code in other
+    classes.
+
+    Methods:
+        __init__():
+            Initializes the general Helper class.
+
+        get_uuid_string() -> str:
+            Generates a random uuid and returns it as a string.
+
+        log_node_metrics(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any], init: bool = True) -> None:
+            Logs the memory, CPU, and disk usage metrics of nodes in the provided proxlb_data dictionary.
+
+        get_version(print_version: bool = False) -> None:
+            Returns the current version of ProxLB and optionally prints it to stdout.
+
+        get_daemon_mode(proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any]) -> None:
+            Checks if the daemon mode is active and handles the scheduling accordingly.
+    """
+    proxlb_reload = False
+
+    def __init__(self):
+        """
+        Initializes the general Helper clas.
+        """
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_uuid_string() -> str:
+        """
+        Generates a random uuid and returns it as a string.
+
+        Args:
+            None
+
+        Returns:
+            Str: Returns a random uuid as a string.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_uuid_string.")
+        generated_uuid = uuid.uuid4()
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_uuid_string.")
+        return str(generated_uuid)
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def log_node_metrics(proxlb_data: Dict[str, Any], init: bool = True) -> None:
+        """
+        Logs the memory, CPU, and disk usage metrics of nodes in the provided proxlb_data dictionary.
+
+        This method processes the usage metrics of nodes and logs them. It also updates the
+        'statistics' field in the 'meta' section of the proxlb_data dictionary with the
+        memory, CPU, and disk usage metrics before and after a certain operation.
+
+            proxlb_data (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing node metrics and metadata.
+            init (bool): A flag indicating whether to initialize the 'before' statistics
+                        (True) or update the 'after' statistics (False). Default is True.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: log_node_metrics.")
+        nodes_usage_memory = " | ".join([f"{key}: {value['memory_used_percent']:.2f}%" for key, value in proxlb_data["nodes"].items()])
+        nodes_usage_cpu = "  | ".join([f"{key}: {value['cpu_used_percent']:.2f}%" for key, value in proxlb_data["nodes"].items()])
+        nodes_usage_disk = " | ".join([f"{key}: {value['disk_used_percent']:.2f}%" for key, value in proxlb_data["nodes"].items()])
+
+        if init:
+            proxlb_data["meta"]["statistics"] = {"before": {"memory": nodes_usage_memory, "cpu": nodes_usage_cpu, "disk": nodes_usage_disk}, "after": {"memory": "", "cpu": "", "disk": ""}}
+        else:
+            proxlb_data["meta"]["statistics"]["after"] = {"memory": nodes_usage_memory, "cpu": nodes_usage_cpu, "disk": nodes_usage_disk}
+
+        logger.debug(f"Nodes usage memory: {nodes_usage_memory}")
+        logger.debug(f"Nodes usage cpu:    {nodes_usage_cpu}")
+        logger.debug(f"Nodes usage disk:   {nodes_usage_disk}")
+        logger.debug("Finished: log_node_metrics.")
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_version(print_version: bool = False) -> None:
+        """
+        Returns the current version of ProxLB and optionally prints it to stdout.
+
+        Parameters:
+            print_version (bool): If True, prints the version information to stdout and exits the program.
+
+        Returns:
+            None
+        """
+        if print_version:
+            print(f"{utils.version.__app_name__} version: {utils.version.__version__}\n(C) 2025 by {utils.version.__author__}\n{utils.version.__url__}")
+            sys.exit(0)
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_daemon_mode(proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any]) -> None:
+        """
+        Checks if the daemon mode is active and handles the scheduling accordingly.
+
+        Parameters:
+            proxlb_config (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing the ProxLB configuration.
+
+        Returns:
+            None
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_daemon_mode.")
+        if proxlb_config.get("service", {}).get("daemon", True):
+
+            # Validate schedule format which changed in v1.1.1
+            if type(proxlb_config["service"].get("schedule", None)) != dict:
+                logger.error("Invalid format for schedule. Please use 'hours' or 'minutes'.")
+                sys.exit(1)
+
+            # Convert hours to seconds
+            if proxlb_config["service"]["schedule"].get("format", "hours") == "hours":
+                sleep_seconds = proxlb_config.get("service", {}).get("schedule", {}).get("interval", 12) * 3600
+            # Convert minutes to seconds
+            elif proxlb_config["service"]["schedule"].get("format", "hours") == "minutes":
+                sleep_seconds = proxlb_config.get("service", {}).get("schedule", {}).get("interval", 720) * 60
+            else:
+                logger.error("Invalid format for schedule. Please use 'hours' or 'minutes'.")
+                sys.exit(1)
+
+            logger.info(f"Daemon mode active: Next run in: {proxlb_config.get('service', {}).get('schedule', {}).get('interval', 12)} {proxlb_config['service']['schedule'].get('format', 'hours')}.")
+            time.sleep(sleep_seconds)
+
+        else:
+            logger.debug("Successfully executed ProxLB. Daemon mode not active - stopping.")
+            print("Daemon mode not active - stopping.")
+            sys.exit(0)
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_daemon_mode.")
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_service_delay(proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any]) -> None:
+        """
+        Checks if a start up delay for the service is defined and waits to proceed until
+        the time is up.
+
+        Parameters:
+            proxlb_config (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing the ProxLB configuration.
+
+        Returns:
+            None
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_service_delay.")
+        if proxlb_config.get("service", {}).get("delay", {}).get("enable", False):
+
+            # Convert hours to seconds
+            if proxlb_config["service"]["delay"].get("format", "hours") == "hours":
+                sleep_seconds = proxlb_config.get("service", {}).get("delay", {}).get("time", 1) * 3600
+            # Convert minutes to seconds
+            elif proxlb_config["service"]["delay"].get("format", "hours") == "minutes":
+                sleep_seconds = proxlb_config.get("service", {}).get("delay", {}).get("time", 60) * 60
+            else:
+                logger.error("Invalid format for service delay. Please use 'hours' or 'minutes'.")
+                sys.exit(1)
+
+            logger.info(f"Service delay active: First run in: {proxlb_config.get('service', {}).get('delay', {}).get('time', 1)} {proxlb_config['service']['delay'].get('format', 'hours')}.")
+            time.sleep(sleep_seconds)
+
+        else:
+            logger.debug("Service delay not active. Proceeding without delay.")
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: get_service_delay.")
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def print_json(proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any], print_json: bool = False) -> None:
+        """
+        Prints the calculated balancing matrix as a JSON output to stdout.
+
+        Parameters:
+            proxlb_config (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing the ProxLB configuration.
+
+        Returns:
+            None
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: print_json.")
+        if print_json:
+            # Create a filtered list by stripping the 'meta' key from the proxlb_config dictionary
+            # to make sure that no credentials are leaked.
+            filtered_data = {k: v for k, v in proxlb_config.items() if k != "meta"}
+            print(json.dumps(filtered_data, indent=4))
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: print_json.")
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def handler_sighup(signum, frame):
+        """
+        Signal handler for SIGHUP.
+
+        This method is triggered when the process receives a SIGHUP signal.
+        It sets the `proxlb_reload` class variable to True to indicate that
+        configuration should be reloaded in the main loop.
+
+        Args:
+            signum (int): The signal number (expected to be signal.SIGHUP).
+            frame (frame object): Current stack frame (unused but required by signal handler signature).
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: handle_sighup.")
+        logger.debug("Got SIGHUP signal. Reloading...")
+        Helper.proxlb_reload = True
+        logger.debug("Finished: handle_sighup.")
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_host_port_from_string(host_object):
+        """
+        Parses a string containing a host (IPv4, IPv6, or hostname) and an optional port, and returns a tuple of (host, port).
+
+        Supported formats:
+        - Hostname or IPv4 without port: "example.com" or "192.168.0.1"
+        - Hostname or IPv4 with port: "example.com:8006" or "192.168.0.1:8006"
+        - IPv6 in brackets with optional port: "[fc00::1]" or "[fc00::1]:8006"
+        - IPv6 without brackets, port is assumed after last colon: "fc00::1:8006"
+
+        If no port is specified, port 8006 is used as the default.
+
+        Args:
+            host_object (str): A string representing a host with or without a port.
+
+        Returns:
+            tuple: A tuple (host: str, port: int)
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: get_host_port_from_string.")
+
+        # IPv6 (with or without port, written in brackets)
+        match = re.match(r'^\[(.+)\](?::(\d+))?$', host_object)
+        if match:
+            host = match.group(1)
+            port = int(match.group(2)) if match.group(2) else 8006
+            return host, port
+
+        # Count colons to identify IPv6 addresses without brackets
+        colon_count = host_object.count(':')
+
+        # IPv4 or hostname without port
+        if colon_count == 0:
+            return host_object, 8006
+
+        # IPv4 or hostname with port
+        elif colon_count == 1:
+            host, port = host_object.split(':')
+            return host, int(port)
+
+        # IPv6 (with or without port, assume last colon is port)
+        else:
+            parts = host_object.rsplit(':', 1)
+            try:
+                port = int(parts[1])
+                return parts[0], port
+            except ValueError:
+                return host_object, 8006

proxlb/utils/logger.py

@@ -0,0 +1,146 @@
+"""
+The SystemdLogger class provides a singleton logger that integrates with systemd's journal if available.
+It dynamically evaluates the environment and adjusts the logger accordingly.
+"""
+
+__author__ = "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy>"
+__copyright__ = "Copyright (C) 2025 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg (@gyptazy)"
+__license__ = "GPL-3.0"
+
+
+import logging
+import sys
+try:
+    from systemd.journal import JournalHandler
+    SYSTEMD_PRESENT = True
+except ImportError:
+    SYSTEMD_PRESENT = False
+
+
+class SystemdLogger:
+    """
+    The SystemdLogger class provides a singleton logger that integrates with systemd's journal if available.
+    It dynamically evaluates the environment and adjusts the logger accordingly.
+
+    Attributes:
+        instance (SystemdLogger): Singleton instance of the SystemdLogger class.
+
+    Methods:
+        __new__(cls, name: str = "ProxLB", level: str = logging.INFO) -> 'SystemdLogger':
+            Creates a new instance of the SystemdLogger class or returns the existing instance.
+
+        initialize_logger(self, name: str, level: str) -> None:
+            Initializes the logger with the given name and log level. Adds a JournalHandler if systemd is present.
+
+        set_log_level(self, level: str) -> None:
+            Sets the log level for the logger and all its handlers.
+
+        debug(self, msg: str) -> str:
+            Logs a message with level DEBUG.
+
+        info(self, msg: str) -> str:
+            Logs a message with level INFO.
+
+        warning(self, msg: str) -> str:
+            Logs a message with level WARNING.
+
+        error(self, msg: str) -> str:
+            Logs a message with level ERROR.
+
+        critical(self, msg: str) -> str:
+            Logs a message with level CRITICAL.
+    """
+    # Create a singleton instance variable
+    instance = None
+
+    def __new__(cls, name: str = "ProxLB", level: str = logging.INFO) -> 'SystemdLogger':
+        """
+        Creating a new systemd logger class based on a given logging name
+        and its logging level/verbosity.
+
+        Args:
+            name (str): The application name that is being used for the logger.
+            level (str): The log level defined as a string (e.g.: INFO).
+
+        Returns:
+            SystemdLogger: The systemd logger object.
+        """
+        # Check if instance already exists, otherwise create a new one
+        if cls.instance is None:
+            cls.instance = super(SystemdLogger, cls).__new__(cls)
+            cls.instance.initialize_logger(name, level)
+        return cls.instance
+
+    def initialize_logger(self, name: str, level: str) -> None:
+        """
+        Initializing the systemd logger class based on a given logging name
+        and its logging level/verbosity.
+
+        Args:
+            name (str): The application name that is being used for the logger.
+            level (str): The log level defined as a string (e.g.: INFO).
+        """
+        self.logger = logging.getLogger(name)
+        self.logger.setLevel(level)
+
+        # Create a logging handler depending on the
+        # capabilities of the underlying OS where systemd
+        # logging is preferred.
+        if SYSTEMD_PRESENT:
+            # Add a JournalHandler for systemd integration
+            handler = JournalHandler()
+        else:
+            # Add a stdout handler as a fallback
+            handler = logging.StreamHandler(sys.stdout)
+
+        handler.setLevel(level)
+        # Set a formatter to include the logger's name and log message
+        formatter = logging.Formatter('%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s')
+        handler.setFormatter(formatter)
+        # Add handler to logger
+        self.logger.addHandler(handler)
+
+    def set_log_level(self, level: str) -> None:
+        """
+        Modifies and sets the log level on the given log level.
+
+        Args:
+            level (str): The log level defined as a string (e.g.: INFO).
+        """
+        self.logger.setLevel(level)
+
+        for handler in self.logger.handlers:
+            handler.setLevel(level)
+
+        self.logger.debug("Set to debug level")
+
+    # Handle systemd log levels
+    def debug(self, msg: str) -> str:
+        """
+        Logger out for messages of type: DEBUG
+        """
+        self.logger.debug(msg)
+
+    def info(self, msg: str) -> str:
+        """
+        Logger out for messages of type: INFO
+        """
+        self.logger.info(msg)
+
+    def warning(self, msg: str) -> str:
+        """
+        Logger out for messages of type: WARNING
+        """
+        self.logger.warning(msg)
+
+    def error(self, msg: str) -> str:
+        """
+        Logger out for messages of type: ERROR
+        """
+        self.logger.error(msg)
+
+    def critical(self, msg: str) -> str:
+        """
+        Logger out for messages of type: CRITICAL
+        """
+        self.logger.critical(msg)

proxlb/utils/proxmox_api.py

@@ -0,0 +1,431 @@
+"""
+    The proxmox_api class manages connections to the Proxmox API by parsing the required objects
+    for the authentication which can be based on username/password or API tokens.
+
+    This class provides methods to initialize the Proxmox API connection, test connectivity to
+    Proxmox hosts, and handle authentication using either username/password or API tokens.
+    It also includes functionality to distribute load across multiple Proxmox API endpoints
+    and manage SSL certificate validation.
+"""
+
+__author__ = "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy>"
+__copyright__ = "Copyright (C) 2025 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg (@gyptazy)"
+__license__ = "GPL-3.0"
+
+
+try:
+    import proxmoxer
+    PROXMOXER_PRESENT = True
+except ImportError:
+    PROXMOXER_PRESENT = False
+import random
+import socket
+try:
+    import requests
+    REQUESTS_PRESENT = True
+except ImportError:
+    REQUESTS_PRESENT = False
+import sys
+import time
+try:
+    import urllib3
+    URLLIB3_PRESENT = True
+except ImportError:
+    URLLIB3_PRESENT = False
+from typing import Dict, Any
+from utils.helper import Helper
+from utils.logger import SystemdLogger
+
+
+if not PROXMOXER_PRESENT:
+    print("Error: The required library 'proxmoxer' is not installed.")
+    sys.exit(1)
+
+if not URLLIB3_PRESENT:
+    print("Error: The required library 'urllib3' is not installed.")
+    sys.exit(1)
+
+if not REQUESTS_PRESENT:
+    print("Error: The required library 'requests' is not installed.")
+    sys.exit(1)
+
+
+logger = SystemdLogger()
+
+
+class ProxmoxApi:
+    """
+    The proxmox_api class manages connections to the Proxmox API by parsing the required objects
+    for the authentication which can be based on username/password or API tokens.
+
+    This class provides methods to initialize the Proxmox API connection, test connectivity to
+    Proxmox hosts, and handle authentication using either username/password or API tokens.
+    It also includes functionality to distribute load across multiple Proxmox API endpoints
+    and manage SSL certificate validation.
+
+    Attributes:
+        logger (SystemdLogger): Logger instance for logging messages.
+        proxmox_api (proxmoxer.ProxmoxAPI): Authenticated ProxmoxAPI object.
+
+    Methods:
+        __init__(proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any]) -> None:
+            Initializes the ProxmoxApi instance with the provided configuration.
+        __getattr__(name):
+            Delegates attribute access to the proxmox_api object.
+        api_connect_get_hosts(proxmox_api_endpoints: list) -> str:
+            Determines a working Proxmox API host from a list of endpoints.
+        test_api_proxmox_host(host: str) -> str:
+            Tests connectivity to a Proxmox host by resolving its IP address.
+        test_api_proxmox_host_ipv4(host: str, port: int = 8006, timeout: int = 1) -> bool:
+            Tests reachability of a Proxmox host on its IPv4 address.
+        test_api_proxmox_host_ipv6(host: str, port: int = 8006, timeout: int = 1) -> bool:
+            Tests reachability of a Proxmox host on its IPv6 address.
+        api_connect(proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any]) -> proxmoxer.ProxmoxAPI:
+            Establishes a connection to the Proxmox API using the provided configuration.
+    """
+    def __init__(self, proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any]) -> None:
+        """
+        Initializes the ProxmoxApi instance with the provided configuration.
+
+        This constructor method sets up the Proxmox API connection by calling the
+        api_connect method with the given configuration dictionary. It logs the
+        initialization process for debugging purposes.
+
+        Args:
+            proxlb_config (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing the Proxmox API configuration.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: ProxmoxApi initialization.")
+        self.proxmox_api = self.api_connect(proxlb_config)
+        self.test_api_user_permissions(self.proxmox_api)
+        logger.debug("Finished: ProxmoxApi initialization.")
+
+    def __getattr__(self, name):
+        """
+        Delegate attribute access to proxmox_api to the underlying proxmoxer module.
+        """
+        return getattr(self.proxmox_api, name)
+
+    def validate_config(self, proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any]) -> None:
+        """
+        Validates the provided ProxLB configuration dictionary to ensure that it contains
+        the necessary credentials for authentication and that the credentials are not
+        mutually exclusive.
+
+        Args:
+            proxlb_config (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing the ProxLB configuration.
+                It must include a "proxmox_api" key with a nested dictionary that contains
+                either "user" and "password" keys for username/password authentication or
+                "token_id" and "token_secret" keys for API token authentication.
+
+        Raises:
+            SystemExit: If both pass/token_secret and API token authentication methods are
+                        provided, the function will log a critical error message and terminate
+                        the program.
+
+        Logs:
+            Logs the start and end of the validation process. Logs a critical error if both
+            authentication methods are provided.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: validate_config.")
+        if not proxlb_config.get("proxmox_api", False):
+            logger.critical(f"Config error. Please check your proxmox_api chapter in your config file.")
+            print(f"Config error. Please check your proxmox_api chapter in your config file.")
+            sys.exit(1)
+
+        proxlb_credentials = proxlb_config["proxmox_api"]
+        present_auth_pass = "pass" in proxlb_credentials
+        present_auth_secret = "token_secret" in proxlb_credentials
+
+        if present_auth_pass and present_auth_secret:
+            logger.critical(f"Username/password and API token authentication are mutal exclusive. Please use only one!")
+            print(f"Username/password and API token authentication are mutal exclusive. Please use only one!")
+            sys.exit(1)
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: validate_config.")
+
+    def api_connect_get_hosts(self, proxlb_config, proxmox_api_endpoints: list) -> str:
+        """
+        Perform a connectivity test to determine a working host for the Proxmox API.
+
+        This method takes a list of Proxmox API endpoints and validates their connectivity.
+        It returns a working host from the list. If only one endpoint is provided, it is
+        returned immediately. If multiple endpoints are provided, each one is tested for
+        connectivity. If a valid host is found, it is returned. If multiple valid hosts
+        are found, one is chosen at random to distribute the load across the cluster.
+
+        Args:
+            proxlb_config (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing the ProxLB configuration.
+            proxmox_api_endpoints (list): A list of Proxmox API endpoints to test.
+
+        Returns:
+            str: A working Proxmox API host.
+
+        Raises:
+            SystemExit: If the provided endpoints are not a list, if the list is empty,
+                        or if no valid hosts are found.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: api_connect_get_hosts.")
+        # Pre-validate the given API endpoints
+        if not isinstance(proxmox_api_endpoints, list):
+            logger.critical(f"The proxmox_api hosts are not defined as a list type.")
+            sys.exit(1)
+
+        if not proxmox_api_endpoints:
+            logger.critical(f"No proxmox_api hosts are defined.")
+            sys.exit(1)
+
+        if len(proxmox_api_endpoints) == 0:
+            logger.critical(f"No proxmox_api hosts are defined.")
+            sys.exit(1)
+
+        # If we have multiple Proxmox API endpoints, we need to check each one by
+        # doing a connection attempt for IPv4 and IPv6. If we find a working one,
+        # we return that one. This allows us to define multiple endpoints in a cluster.
+        validated_api_hosts = []
+        for host in proxmox_api_endpoints:
+
+            # Get or set a default value for a maximum of retries when connecting to
+            # the Proxmox API
+            api_connection_retries = proxlb_config["proxmox_api"].get("retries", 1)
+            api_connection_wait_time = proxlb_config["proxmox_api"].get("wait_time", 1)
+
+            for api_connection_attempt in range(api_connection_retries):
+                validated_api_host, api_port = self.test_api_proxmox_host(host)
+                if validated_api_host:
+                    validated_api_hosts.append(validated_api_host)
+                    break
+                else:
+                    logger.warning(f"Attempt {api_connection_attempt + 1}/{api_connection_retries} failed for host {host}. Retrying in {api_connection_wait_time} seconds...")
+                    time.sleep(api_connection_wait_time)
+
+        if len(validated_api_hosts) > 0:
+            # Choose a random host to distribute the load across the cluster
+            # as a simple load balancing mechanism.
+            return random.choice(validated_api_hosts), api_port
+
+        logger.critical("No valid Proxmox API hosts found.")
+        print("No valid Proxmox API hosts found.")
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: api_connect_get_hosts.")
+        sys.exit(1)
+
+    def test_api_proxmox_host(self, host: str) -> str:
+        """
+        Tests the connectivity to a Proxmox host by resolving its IP address and
+        checking both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
+
+        This function attempts to resolve the given hostname to its IP addresses
+        (both IPv4 and IPv6). It then tests the connectivity to the Proxmox API
+        using the resolved IP addresses. If the host is reachable via either
+        IPv4 or IPv6, the function returns the hostname. If the host is not
+        reachable, the function returns False.
+
+        Args:
+            host (str): The hostname of the Proxmox server to test.
+
+        Returns:
+            str: The hostname if the Proxmox server is reachable.
+            bool: False if the Proxmox server is not reachable.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: test_api_proxmox_host.")
+
+        # Validate for custom ports in API hosts which might indicate
+        # that an external loadbalancer will be used.
+        host, port = Helper.get_host_port_from_string(host)
+
+        # Try resolving DNS to IP and log non-resolvable ones
+        try:
+            ip = socket.getaddrinfo(host, None, socket.AF_UNSPEC)
+        except socket.gaierror:
+            logger.warning(f"Could not resolve {host}.")
+            return False
+
+        # Validate if given object is IPv4 or IPv6
+        for address_type in ip:
+            if address_type[0] == socket.AF_INET:
+                logger.debug(f"{host} is type ipv4.")
+                if self.test_api_proxmox_host_ipv4(host, port):
+                    return host, port
+            elif address_type[0] == socket.AF_INET6:
+                logger.debug(f"{host} is type ipv6.")
+                if self.test_api_proxmox_host_ipv6(host, port):
+                    return host, port
+            else:
+                return False
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: test_api_proxmox_host.")
+
+    def test_api_proxmox_host_ipv4(self, host: str, port: int = 8006, timeout: int = 1) -> bool:
+        """
+        Test the reachability of a Proxmox host on its IPv4 management address.
+
+        This method attempts to establish a TCP connection to the specified host and port
+        within a given timeout period. It logs the process and results, indicating whether
+        the host is reachable or not.
+
+        Args:
+            host (str): The IPv4 address or hostname of the Proxmox host to test.
+            port (int, optional): The TCP port to connect to on the host. Defaults to 8006.
+            timeout (int, optional): The timeout duration in seconds for the connection attempt. Defaults to 1.
+
+        Returns:
+            bool: True if the host is reachable on the specified port, False otherwise.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: test_api_proxmox_host_ipv4.")
+        sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
+        sock.settimeout(timeout)
+        logger.warning(f"Warning: Host {host} ran into a timeout when connecting on IPv4 for tcp/{port}.")
+        result = sock.connect_ex((host, port))
+
+        if result == 0:
+            sock.close()
+            logger.debug(f"Host {host} is reachable on IPv4 for tcp/{port}.")
+            return True
+
+        sock.close()
+        logger.warning(f"Host {host} is unreachable on IPv4 for tcp/{port}.")
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: test_api_proxmox_host_ipv4.")
+        return False
+
+    def test_api_proxmox_host_ipv6(self, host: str, port: int = 8006, timeout: int = 1) -> bool:
+        """
+        Test the reachability of a Proxmox host on its IPv6 management address.
+
+        This method attempts to establish a TCP connection to the specified host and port
+        within a given timeout period. It logs the process and results, indicating whether
+        the host is reachable or not.
+
+        Args:
+            host (str): The IPv6 address or hostname of the Proxmox host to test.
+            port (int, optional): The TCP port to connect to on the host. Defaults to 8006.
+            timeout (int, optional): The timeout duration in seconds for the connection attempt. Defaults to 1.
+
+        Returns:
+            bool: True if the host is reachable on the specified port, False otherwise.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: test_api_proxmox_host_ipv6.")
+        sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET6, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
+        sock.settimeout(timeout)
+        logger.warning(f"Host {host} ran into a timeout when connecting via IPv6 for tcp/{port}.")
+        result = sock.connect_ex((host, port))
+
+        if result == 0:
+            sock.close()
+            logger.debug(f"Host {host} is reachable on IPv6 for tcp/{port}.")
+            return True
+
+        sock.close()
+        logger.warning(f"Host {host} is unreachable on IPv6 for tcp/{port}.")
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: test_api_proxmox_host_ipv6.")
+        return False
+
+    def test_api_user_permissions(self, proxmox_api: any):
+        """
+        Test the permissions of the current user/token used for the Proxmox API.
+
+        This method gets all assigned permissions for all API paths for the current
+        used user/token and validates them against the minimum required permissions.
+
+        Args:
+            proxmox_api (any): The Proxmox API client instance.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: test_api_user_permissions.")
+        permissions_required = ["Datastore.Audit", "Sys.Audit", "VM.Audit", "VM.Migrate"]
+        permissions_available = []
+
+        # Get the permissions for the current user/token from API
+        permissions = proxmox_api.access.permissions.get()
+
+        # Get all available permissions of the current user/token
+        for path, permission in permissions.items():
+            for permission in permissions[path]:
+                permissions_available.append(permission)
+
+        # Validate if all required permissions are included within the available permissions
+        for required_permission in permissions_required:
+            if required_permission not in permissions_available:
+                logger.critical(f"Permission '{required_permission}' is missing. Please adjust the permissions for your user/token. See also: https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB/blob/main/docs/03_configuration.md#required-permissions-for-a-user")
+                sys.exit(1)
+
+        logger.debug("Finished: test_api_user_permissions.")
+
+    def api_connect(self, proxlb_config: Dict[str, Any]) -> proxmoxer.ProxmoxAPI:
+        """
+        Establishes a connection to the Proxmox API using the provided configuration.
+
+        This function retrieves the Proxmox API endpoint from the configuration, optionally disables SSL certificate
+        validation warnings, and attempts to authenticate and create a ProxmoxAPI object. It handles various exceptions
+        related to authentication, connection timeouts, SSL errors, and connection refusals, logging appropriate error
+        messages and exiting the program if necessary.
+
+        Args:
+            proxlb_config (Dict[str, Any]): A dictionary containing the Proxmox API configuration. Expected keys include:
+                - "proxmox_api": A dictionary with the following keys:
+                    - "hosts" (List[str]): A list of Proxmox API host addresses.
+                    - "user" (str): The username for Proxmox API authentication.
+                    - "pass" (str): The password for Proxmox API authentication.
+                    - "ssl_verification" (bool): Whether to verify SSL certificates (default is True).
+                    - "timeout" (int): The timeout duration for API requests.
+
+        Returns:
+            proxmoxer.ProxmoxAPI: An authenticated ProxmoxAPI object.
+
+        Raises:
+            proxmoxer.backends.https.AuthenticationError: If authentication fails.
+            requests.exceptions.ConnectTimeout: If the connection to the Proxmox API times out.
+            requests.exceptions.SSLError: If SSL certificate validation fails.
+            requests.exceptions.ConnectionError: If the connection to the Proxmox API is refused.
+        """
+        logger.debug("Starting: api_connect.")
+        # Validate config
+        self.validate_config(proxlb_config)
+
+        # Get a valid Proxmox API endpoint
+        proxmox_api_endpoint, proxmox_api_port = self.api_connect_get_hosts(proxlb_config, proxlb_config.get("proxmox_api", {}).get("hosts", []))
+
+        # Disable warnings for SSL certificate validation
+        if not proxlb_config.get("proxmox_api").get("ssl_verification", True):
+            logger.warning(f"SSL certificate validation to host {proxmox_api_endpoint} is deactivated.")
+            urllib3.disable_warnings(category=urllib3.exceptions.InsecureRequestWarning)
+            requests.packages.urllib3.disable_warnings()
+
+        # Login into Proxmox API and create API object
+        try:
+
+            if proxlb_config.get("proxmox_api").get("token_secret", False):
+                proxmox_api = proxmoxer.ProxmoxAPI(
+                    proxmox_api_endpoint,
+                    port=proxmox_api_port,
+                    user=proxlb_config.get("proxmox_api").get("user", True),
+                    token_name=proxlb_config.get("proxmox_api").get("token_id", True),
+                    token_value=proxlb_config.get("proxmox_api").get("token_secret", True),
+                    verify_ssl=proxlb_config.get("proxmox_api").get("ssl_verification", True),
+                    timeout=proxlb_config.get("proxmox_api").get("timeout", True))
+                logger.debug("Using API token authentication.")
+            else:
+                proxmox_api = proxmoxer.ProxmoxAPI(
+                    proxmox_api_endpoint,
+                    port=proxmox_api_port,
+                    user=proxlb_config.get("proxmox_api").get("user", True),
+                    password=proxlb_config.get("proxmox_api").get("pass", True),
+                    verify_ssl=proxlb_config.get("proxmox_api").get("ssl_verification", True),
+                    timeout=proxlb_config.get("proxmox_api").get("timeout", True))
+                logger.debug("Using username/password authentication.")
+        except proxmoxer.backends.https.AuthenticationError as proxmox_api_error:
+            logger.critical(f"Authentication failed. Please check the defined credentials: {proxmox_api_error}")
+            sys.exit(2)
+        except requests.exceptions.ConnectTimeout:
+            logger.critical(f"Connection timeout to host {proxmox_api_endpoint}")
+            sys.exit(2)
+        except requests.exceptions.SSLError as proxmox_api_error:
+            logger.critical(f"SSL certificate validation failed: {proxmox_api_error}")
+            sys.exit(2)
+        except requests.exceptions.ConnectionError:
+            logger.critical(f"Connection refused by host {proxmox_api_endpoint}")
+            sys.exit(2)
+
+        logger.info(f"API connection to host {proxmox_api_endpoint} succeeded.")
+        logger.debug("Finished: api_connect.")
+        return proxmox_api

proxlb/utils/version.py

@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+__app_name__ = "ProxLB"
+__app_desc__ = "A DRS alike loadbalancer for Proxmox clusters."
+__author__ = "Florian Paul Azim Hoberg <gyptazy>"
+__copyright__ = "Copyright (C) 2025 Florian Paul Azim Hoberg (@gyptazy)"
+__license__ = "GPL-3.0"
+__version__ = "1.1.5"
+__url__ = "https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB"

requirements.txt

@@ -1,5 +1,4 @@
-argparse
-configparser
 proxmoxer
 requests
-urllib3
+urllib3
+PyYAML

service/proxlb.service

@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+[Unit]
+Description=ProxLB - A loadbalancer for Proxmox clusters
+After=network-online.target pveproxy.service
+Wants=network-online.target pveproxy.service
+
+[Service]
+ExecStart=python3 /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/proxlb/main.py -c /etc/proxlb/proxlb.yaml
+User=plb
+ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
+KillMode=process
+
+[Install]
+WantedBy=multi-user.target

setup.cfg

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+[pycodestyle]
+ignore = E501, W503

setup.py

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+from setuptools import setup
+
+setup(
+    name="proxlb",
+    version="1.1.5",
+    description="A DRS alike loadbalancer for Proxmox clusters.",
+    long_description="An advanced DRS alike loadbalancer for Proxmox clusters that also supports maintenance modes and affinity/anti-affinity rules.",
+    author="Florian Paul Azim Hoberg",
+    author_email="gyptazy@gyptazy.com",
+    maintainer="Florian Paul Azim Hoberg",
+    maintainer_email="gyptazy@gyptazy.com",
+    url="https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB",
+    packages=["proxlb", "proxlb.utils", "proxlb.models"],
+    install_requires=[
+        "requests",
+        "urllib3",
+        "proxmoxer",
+        "pyyaml",
+    ],
+        data_files=[('/etc/systemd/system', ['service/proxlb.service']), ('/etc/proxlb/', ['config/proxlb_example.yaml'])],
+)

tests/README.md

@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-## Unit Tests