I recently gave up on Proxmox for my home lab needs after a failed upgrade from 8 to 9. I also never liked the feeling of not having an easy to use API.
Question: did you run the pve8to9 script? Read their extensive documentation [0]on how to upgrade? Fix the stuff aforementioned script comes up with?
My cluster went from 6 to 7, 7 to 8 and recently 8 to 9, along with Ceph - all without a single problem.
Given it’s more or less Debian underneath, not too surprising I’d say? Granted, there’s always a chance for something to go sideways, however, it’s unlikely you’re the first person to encounter this problem and if you check their forums, you should find a solution.
Depending on what your needs are, have a look at Incus-OS. While recently released and with lot of stuff “still in progress”, it’s something to keep an eye on. Even comes with ZFS:
