Question on PBS setup and hardware

marar

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Dec 4, 2024
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I have ran PBS in the past on bare metal and had no issues, but my setup has since change and looking for some help on which direction I should go if not running bare metal anymore.

Would it be better to ...
  1. Install PBS as VM on Proxmox and backup to a NFS share on Synolgoy.
  2. Install PBS as VM on Synology.
 
  1. Install PBS as VM on Proxmox and backup to a NFS share on Synolgoy.
  2. Install PBS as VM on Synology.
Both (!) is suboptimal. (You know that, right?)

But if I am forced to choose: the PBS (or any backup system) should be independent from the source it will backup. You'll probably want the backup to be available and usable when (not: if!) the source dies, right?
 
Would it be better to ...
  1. Install PBS as VM on Proxmox and backup to a NFS share on Synolgoy.
  2. Install PBS as VM on Synology.

I suggest that option 2 is preferable, except it won't protect you in the case of fire or flood in the home, but I'm sure that you are aware of that.
 
Both (!) is suboptimal. (You know that, right?)

But if I am forced to choose: the PBS (or any backup system) should be independent from the source it will backup. You'll probably want the backup to be available and usable when (not: if!) the source dies, right?
Technically both options the backup is still available if the host dies, though one is a little harder to recover. I know it's not optimal and is why i have ran bare metal up until now. Just looking at best option short term and know many people run it in a vm on pve.
 
I suggest that option 2 is preferable, except it won't protect you in the case of fire or flood in the home, but I'm sure that you are aware of that.
Thank you, yeah fire and flood would not be good. I do have cold storage off site for more important things to try and help with that.
 
And a ZFS Pool with 2x VDEV[0,1] zfs mirror of 2x HDDs and VDEV2 zfs special device of N x SSDs N >1 can/ will work too.
I give my proxmox bs with zfs, 32 gbyte ram and up to 24 gbyte ram arc cache.
I understand that those are best practices, but those specs are difficult or too costly for most who are building a homelab, remember that for most it's just a hobby or a learning tool, so the costs matter.
 
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I would prefer the second one since with that you don't need a network connection for the verify and garbage-collection jobs. The German forum had a thread on it: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/warum-ist-der-pbs-so-picky-bei-nfs-storage-mounts.160610/

Basically the user switched from option 1 (PBS VM on PVE host, NFS share on NAS as datastore) to option 2 (PBS VM on the NAS) which ended in a huge speedup for the garbage-collection and verify jobs.

If your budget allows a seperate used Mini-PC with just PBS installed is another option for a low-budget backup server.
 
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having PBS and its payload storage integrated into one device seems like a perfectly reasonable solution...
Yes, it works.

I said "suboptimal". For me this means that some potential is wasted - for one or another reason. In this case we know that PBS wants IOPS. For me this means that the best results require direct hardware access to fast storage, e.g. SSDs. Each abstraction layer like virtual disks for the chunk-store or traversing a complex network stack to reach out for NFS adds latency.

There are a lot of different ways to implement a backup system. And a "suboptimal" PBS is much, much better than no backup :-)
 
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For me this means that some potential is wasted - for one or another reason. In this case we know that PBS wants IOPS
This is completely backwards. PBS doesnt want anything. load is generated by the sender, and is limited by the host storage and network connection. without establishing what your load is, you're not "wasting" anything.

More to the point, the payload storage is already established; you're not going to make it substantively faster by having it accessed by a standalone host as opposed to a local vm.
 
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I would prefer the second one since with that you don't need a network connection for the verify and garbage-collection jobs. The German forum had a thread on it: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/warum-ist-der-pbs-so-picky-bei-nfs-storage-mounts.160610/

Basically the user switched from option 1 (PBS VM on PVE host, NFS share on NAS as datastore) to option 2 (PBS VM on the NAS) which ended in a huge speedup for the garbage-collection and verify jobs.

If your budget allows a seperate used Mini-PC with just PBS installed is another option for a low-budget backup server.
Thank you all for the feedback and understanding this is not the most optimal way of doing it. Leaning more towards option two but am curious about the mini pc thoughts. I had looked into it but was not sure it would be a better option for the cost. Ones I had looked at were the N100 and N150 beelinks but they are 200-300+ from what i could find.
 
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Thank you all for the feedback and understanding this is not the most optimal way of doing it. Leaning more towards option two but am curious about the mini pc thoughts. I had looked into it but was not sure it would be a better option for the cost. Ones I had looked at were the N100 and N150 beelinks but they are 200-300+ from what i could find.
PBS doesn't need much resources (see https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/installation.html#recommended-server-system-requirements ) so you can easily use a used mini-pc. You can get them for around 100-200 € here. I would recommend to get one with a SATA-Port though since SSDs are recommended as storage for PBS. With that you could setup the system to have the OS on the m2 storage (most of these minis have it) and the backups on the SATA-disc. Or you setup the M2 and the SATA as a ZFS mirror and combined OS/datastore.

However if you can't afford this at the moment it's also absolutely valid to go on with your NAS, any backup is better than no backup :)
 
"Backup storage: Prefer fast storage that delivers high IOPS for random IO workloads; use only enterprise SSDs for best results." -- https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/installation.html#recommended-server-system-requirements
We're looking at it from opposite perspectives. the word "prefer" tells the story; to facilitate high load, you will need to do this.

The key remains that backup systems are essentially passive- all the work have to occur from the sender end; If you have no load to produce, why is "optimizing" the destination? look at it another way. Suppose you have a cluster of 1000 virtual machines, each averaging 30GB of data. Your backup window is overnight- say 10 hours. You will need to design a solution that can accommodate that requirements, and in pursuit of that goal you will need to take individual component selection under advisement. If, on the other hand, you have 10 vms with virtually 0 nightly delta, you can backup to a floppy disk.

What you are essentially saying by
In this case we know that PBS wants IOPS.
Is defining the hardware without any backup size or window metric- essentially saying "you need this much stuff" when that actually has no meaning.

To crystalize my point- dont design solutions before you define the problem,

PBS doesn't need much resources (see https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/installation.html#recommended-server-system-requirements ) so you can easily use a used mini-pc.
In a homelab environment this doesnt actually get you anything except a few euros spent and a few pennies of electricity wasted every day. Since the OP already has a storage device that can host PBS directly, its highly probably that it can serve his backup windows satisfactorily.
 
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We're looking at it from opposite perspectives.
Seems so.

One can build a backup system in any way - if it works (reliably, on the long run), it is probably fine :-)
 
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