Hello all,
I’m hoping to get some advice on my self hosting environment. I currently run Proxmox VE with a few VMs, and use Proxmox VE’s built in VM backup method to my NAS. I don’t currently have a good backup method for the host server itself, and I know I’m playing with fire not having that properly backed up.
I have an older laptop that I’m considering turning into a Proxmox Backup Server, which should allow me to backup the host server and VMs, which would make me feel a lot better. The one thing I haven’t really seen info on in my research is if there’s a convenient way to backup THE backup server. If anyone uses PBS, do you back that up as well? How so?
I appreciate any assistance or advice!
I have aPBS server and my friend in a different geographic region has one. I backup to mine and he backs up to his. Mine syncs my backups to a data so l store in his, and his summer backups to a data store in mine. These are our offsite backups.
To be clear, we’re syncing our proxmox VM backups. But Proxmox Backup Server also has a client app, so I also back up my workstation to my PBS and it also syncs to the remote PBS.
You don’t technically need to back up the PBS server as there’s not much there other than a basic config. As far as the backup data itself, you can mirror to another PBS server or I think it supports S3 for offsite storage.
Most people don’t. in the event of a total failure you reinstall Proxmox, you configure your networks, then you restore your backups into it.
Honestly it’s the same method I’ve used countless times on VMware / Rubrik.
PBS has a host backup client you can install on non-VMs. You can then configure it to just backup it’s operating system files. This works for other Linux machines in the network including the Proxmox server, PBS itself or desktops. I even use it on my LibreELEC raspberry pi tv box.
Why would you?
The important part is your VMs and LXCs. Your Proxmox server, at most, requires configuration for specific needs (GPU passthrough for example). The only thing you need for that would be notes on configuration (unless you have this automated, in which case you don’t generally need that, just the notes in your scripts).
So a more important question, to me, is why do you want to back it up in the first place?
Why should I?
Ok, I have a cluster setup, which makes it less likely that all nodes die.
But in case they do, I do get a new server, set it up and get the lxc/vm back from my local disk or cloud copy.I have one PBS in local network and another with smaller disk on a cloud vm in case of big failure
Quick info: you cannot backup the Host server with PBS, only VMs and LXCs.
Edit: there seems to be some ways to send a manual backup of the PVE host to PBS but it seems to be CLI only and I don’t think the GUI allows that.
Also, you might want to put the backups in a dedicated partition or drive if you can, so you’d just have to reinstall pbs in case it get bad. I don’t know any way to backup pbs, as I don’t do that myself, maybe backuppc ?
Also, you might want to put the backups in a dedicated partition or drive if you can, so you’d just have to reinstall pbs in case it get bad.
Yea that’s the main plan, the laptop would hold the PBS system, but all backups would go straight to the NAS. if the laptop dies I can just find something else to put PBS on with minimal hassle.
I don’t. But I do sync the backup data to cloud storage.
Pretty sure PBS doesn’t support backing up the PVE host itself. You can find Scripts on github to backup the PVE config
You can use the Backup Client to backup any physical host: https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/backup-client.html
Yea that’s what I’ve seen so far, just a backup of the /etc/pve files and other network configs should be good enough I suppose.
Oh how good is that. Thanks the info
There is this script. Never used so use it at your own risk. It’s from Proxmox VE scripts
Interesting, I’ll take a look. Thanks!
