🔧 Replace failed disk and recreate the OSD

Follow this sequence to safely remove a failed OSD, replace the physical disk, and recreate the OSD in your Ceph cluster. Commands assume Proxmox with Ceph and use the same conventions from your setup.


1) Identify the failed OSD and device

Note the hostname and the device path (e.g., /dev/sdb) associated with the failed OSD.


2) Mark the OSD out and stop its service

Wait for the cluster to begin recovering: ceph -s should show recovering/backfilling PGs.


3) Remove the OSD from the cluster


4) Replace the physical disk


5) Wipe and prepare the new disk

If the new disk contains old metadata or partitions, wipe it fully:

# Zap partitions and signatures (CAUTION: destructive)
sgdisk --zap-all /dev/sdb
wipefs -a /dev/sdb
partprobe /dev/sdb

6) Create the new OSD on the replacement disk

You’ve been using Proxmox’s pveceph tooling. Create the OSD with the same method:

# On the node hosting the new disk
pveceph osd create /dev/sdb

This handles preparing the disk (ceph-volume), creating the OSD ID, keyrings, and registering it in CRUSH.


7) Verify OSD daemon and CRUSH placement

The new OSD should show as “up/in”. If it’s “up/out”, run ceph osd in <new-id>.


8) Reweight and allow rebalancing


9) Post-replacement checks


Notes and tips

Direct answer: mark the failed OSD out, stop and remove it from Ceph, replace the disk, wipe it, recreate the OSD with pveceph osd create /dev/sdb, verify it’s up/in, and monitor rebalancing until health is OK.