Proxmox Backup Server (beta)

martin

Proxmox Staff Member
Staff member
Apr 28, 2005
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We are proud to announce the first beta release of our new Proxmox Backup Server.

It's an enterprise-class client-server backup software that backups virtual machines, containers, and physical hosts. It is specially optimized for the Proxmox Virtual Environment platform and allows you to backup and replicate your data securely. It provides easy management with a command line and web-based user interface, and is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (GNU AGPL, v3).

Proxmox Backup Server supports incremental backups, deduplication, compression and authenticated encryption. Using Rust as implementation language guarantees high performance, low resource usage, and a safe, high quality code base. It features strong encryption done on the client side. Thus, it’s possible to backup data to not fully trusted targets.

Main Features

Support for Proxmox VE

The Proxmox Virtual Environment is fully supported and you can easily backup virtual machines (supporting QEMU dirty bitmaps) and containers.

Performance
The whole software stack is written in Rust, to provide high speed and memory efficiency.

Deduplication
Periodic backups produce large amounts of duplicate data. The deduplication layer avoids redundancy and minimizes the used storage space.

Incremental backups
Changes between backups are typically low. Reading and sending only the delta reduces storage and network impact of backups.

Data Integrity
The built in SHA-256 checksum algorithm assures the accuracy and consistency of your backups.

Remote Sync
It is possible to efficiently synchronize data to remote sites. Only deltas containing new data are transferred.

Compression
The ultra fast Zstandard compression is able to compress several gigabytes of data per second.

Encryption
Backups can be encrypted on the client-side using AES-256 in Galois/Counter Mode. This authenticated encryption mode provides very high performance on modern hardware.

Web interface
Manage Proxmox backups with the integrated web-based user interface.

Open Source
No secrets. Proxmox Backup Server is free and open-source software. The source code is licensed under AGPL, v3.

Support
Enterprise support will be available from Proxmox.

And of course - Backups can be restored!

Release notes
https://pbs.proxmox.com/wiki/index.php/Roadmap

Download
(edit: 05.10.2020 updated beta ISO to current package versions)
https://www.proxmox.com/downloads
Alternate ISO download:
http://download.proxmox.com/iso

Documentation
https://pbs.proxmox.com

Community Forum
https://forum.proxmox.com

Source Code
https://git.proxmox.com

Bugtracker
https://bugzilla.proxmox.com

FAQ
Q: How does this integrate into Proxmox VE?
A: Just add your Proxmox Backup Server storage as new storage backup target to your Proxmox VE. Make sure that you have at least pve-manager 6.2-9 installed.

Q: What will happen with the existing Proxmox VE backup (vzdump)?
A: You can still use vzdump. The new backup is an additional but very powerful way to backup and restore your VMs and container.

Q: Can I already backup my other Debian servers (file backup agent)?
A: Yes, just install the Proxmox Backup Client.

Q: Are there already backup agents for other distributions?
A: Not packaged yet, but using a statically linked binary should work in most cases on modern Linux OS (work in progress).

Q: Is there any recommended server hardware for the Proxmox Backup Server?
A: Use enterprise class server hardware with enough disks for the (big) ZFS pool holding your backup data. The Backup Server should be in the same datacenter as your Proxmox VE hosts.

Q: Where can I get more information about coming feature updates?
A: Follow the announcement forum, pbs-devel mailing list, and subscribe to our newsletter.

Please help us reaching the final release date by testing this beta and by providing feedback via https://forum.proxmox.com

__________________
Best regards,

Martin Maurer
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Would surely get this checked and would promote. its great surprise from Proxmox Team in this current tough time of covid19.

We do have work for Backup of Ceph snapshot to another-location on another proxmox-ceph for DR backup and also restoration for testing very basic quick script is @ https://github.com/deependhulla/ceph-dr-sync-tool-for-proxmox , would look forward to have simliar stuff for ceph in future roadmap in this Backup solution.

Thanks for overall solution.
 
Sounds awesome, and just published in the right time. Will surely test it....
 
Oh great news! Will only local storage be supported, or also remote storage like NFS?
At this moment I'm using FreeNAS to store the back-ups.
 
Congratulations for this big step forward.

Since I discovered the first references in the installer, I've been waiting for it. Will try very soon and deploy as soon as stable to customers :).
 
Oh great news! Will only local storage be supported, or also remote storage like NFS?

You can use a network storage as a backing path for a Backup Datastore - but we recommend local storage; it's normally just faster and you do not have an extra remote component which could fail.
 
so is it based on zfs snapshots or qemu basicly?

Nothing of both. For storing the data uses a "chunked" store (implemented in the rust programming language) this can save fixed chunks for backing up block devices (QEMU, raw disks, …) and dynamic-sized chunks to backup filesystems (Containers, host filesystem). It isn't really reduced to a type of VM or source storage, currently any block device can be backed up and any Linux supported filesystem can be.

I'd recommend checking out the online documentation: https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/introduction.html#what-is-proxmox-backup-server
 
so is it based on zfs snapshots or qemu basicly?

But, it has a native QEMU implementation - and can use it's dirty-bitmap feature to do very, very fast incremental backups if a VM stays running (bitmap is in RAM-memory).
 
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thank you so much, I hope this product will fit me. Last time I and looking for some backup solutions among some Borg, Bareos, or others. so, your proposal is so in time on my own opinion and could be well-requested by ops staff who used to use Proxmox solutions.
 
If we get a Windows client in the future then this could truly replace all the other backup stuff i need at home and at work.
 
Just installed the new beta and had to do some tinkering with apt to get the client-side to install as the repository is not get signed. Will, there be a way to schedule backup jobs from the server-side or will it rely on something such as a cron job on the client-side to push backups to the server.
 
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Brilliant news!

I’m comparing it with https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Storage_Replication, which is allowed in combination with High-Availability. But Proxmox Backup Server cannot act as a hot-standby, in case of disaster you need to restore every container/VM from backup. I guess the Proxmox Backup Server could be also a proxmox installation, in order to restore the VM/containers on it?

Anyway, since Proxmox Storage Replication is limited only to ZFS Storage ( and hopefully for BTRFS in the future, anyway a Cow storage) , the incremental backup feature of PBS is gold, since you can use it with any type of storage!
 
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Do you plan to make the client available for other distributions? Like CentOS or SUSE? Even MS Windows using vss? :)
 
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