I've done it exactly how you show it, and it works very good, also it doesn't have disatvantage of being only backup (without retention). Thanks!
[SOLVED] Official way to backup proxmox VE itself?
- Thread starter promoxer
- Start date
I'm looking for a way to do this live. I recently converted multiple hosts to Proxmox VMs. One is my pfSense router. Another is my Home assistant, which manages among other things, all the lights in my home. I have the VM backups taken care of. But I really need a way to backup Proxmox itself for disaster recovery purposes. Like another poster, I do have GPU passthrough configured from my AMD 5700G APU onto a Plex Media Server LXC container.
I can't afford to take down my entire Proxmox host in order to do a Proxmox OS backup, since that means I might temporarily be in the dark.
Also, I need something that can be restored easily and quickly for disaster recovery purposes.
The recovery cases are 2-fold . One is the eventual hardware failure of the 16 year old SATA-II 96GB Proxmox boot SSD.
The other is a software disaster, like an exploited security vulnerability, or a problem between chair and computer, ie. config change gone very wrong.
On my bare metal Windows host, I have been using a program called Acronis True Image. At 2am, it runs a WOL script to wake up my NAS, and does differential backups onto it.
If I ever need to restore my Windows OS (and god knows I do it many times), I boot from an Acronis boot recovery media, which has the 10 Gbps NIC drivers loaded, and NAS drive pre-mounted, and after a few clicks, the restore starts, including recreating the partition table and all the file systems on the disk of my choice.
I am hoping for some similar backup/restore workflow for OS backup/restore with Proxmox. I don't expect a GUI for this in the Linux world. I'm very comfortable with CLI. I have typed thousands of commands in the Proxmox CLI in the last 2 weeks since I installed it.
For the Proxmox OS backup, I would backup onto a local hotplug drive, rather than onto the NAS. The reason for this is that if Proxmox is down, my DHCP server will also be down, and the NAS will be offline too as a result, meaning I could not easily restore from the NAS without manually messing with its networking first.
My Proxmox host has 4 SATA hotplug front bays, which would allow easily replacing the boot SSD in case of hardware failure. The hotplug features also allows for backup targets.
So, is it possible to do a true live OS backup of the entire disk ? And if so, with what tool ?
And more importantly, how would it get restored ?
Ideally, I would also like to be able to initiate the restore from another host. Ie. in case of software snafu rather than hardware, to minimize the Proxmox downtime. I would use another computer with a USB SATA hotswap bay attached, insert a SATA SSD into it, and restore it onto the SSD. Then, bring the Proxmox host down temporarily, and swap the SATA SSD in the front drive bay. I have a bunch of spare small SATA SSDs for that purpose.
I can't afford to take down my entire Proxmox host in order to do a Proxmox OS backup, since that means I might temporarily be in the dark.
Also, I need something that can be restored easily and quickly for disaster recovery purposes.
The recovery cases are 2-fold . One is the eventual hardware failure of the 16 year old SATA-II 96GB Proxmox boot SSD.
The other is a software disaster, like an exploited security vulnerability, or a problem between chair and computer, ie. config change gone very wrong.
On my bare metal Windows host, I have been using a program called Acronis True Image. At 2am, it runs a WOL script to wake up my NAS, and does differential backups onto it.
If I ever need to restore my Windows OS (and god knows I do it many times), I boot from an Acronis boot recovery media, which has the 10 Gbps NIC drivers loaded, and NAS drive pre-mounted, and after a few clicks, the restore starts, including recreating the partition table and all the file systems on the disk of my choice.
I am hoping for some similar backup/restore workflow for OS backup/restore with Proxmox. I don't expect a GUI for this in the Linux world. I'm very comfortable with CLI. I have typed thousands of commands in the Proxmox CLI in the last 2 weeks since I installed it.
For the Proxmox OS backup, I would backup onto a local hotplug drive, rather than onto the NAS. The reason for this is that if Proxmox is down, my DHCP server will also be down, and the NAS will be offline too as a result, meaning I could not easily restore from the NAS without manually messing with its networking first.
My Proxmox host has 4 SATA hotplug front bays, which would allow easily replacing the boot SSD in case of hardware failure. The hotplug features also allows for backup targets.
So, is it possible to do a true live OS backup of the entire disk ? And if so, with what tool ?
And more importantly, how would it get restored ?
Ideally, I would also like to be able to initiate the restore from another host. Ie. in case of software snafu rather than hardware, to minimize the Proxmox downtime. I would use another computer with a USB SATA hotswap bay attached, insert a SATA SSD into it, and restore it onto the SSD. Then, bring the Proxmox host down temporarily, and swap the SATA SSD in the front drive bay. I have a bunch of spare small SATA SSDs for that purpose.
I've built a first boot hook script for one of my hosts, which restores nearly everything from a zfs pool inside the host. the hardest part is to keep the script up2date when you make changes on the host.
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Automated_Installation
it's also possible to host answer file and everything on proxmox datacenter manager.
Thanks. How do you perform the backup without taking the proxmox host down ? How do you test your restore ?
IMO, an installation answer file is not the answer. There are many customized things like /etc/fstab that are not answers to install questions. Custom packages installed, Samba config files, etc. All things Linux. I want an actual backup of the physical SSD that can be quickly restored, not necessarily in the same host. This is not really a Proxmox-specific problem. More of a generic Linux backup/restore workflow issue.
i'm talking about the script https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Automated_Installation#First_Boot_Hook_Section
which technically of course could be ran manually after install.
i backup /etc and some other folders daily during runtime. restore during runtime is also no problem, but i've only done it for the relevant files, never the whole folder. as there is other stuff inside which shouldn't be restored, as far as i know.
this works on a new host, if you take care of e.g. eth naming
and i have only single nodes, no cluster!
no regular test. vm live on mirrored nvme zfs pool, i'm only restoring conf files to host ssd.
pbs as worst case fallback, installed on host beside pve. reinstalled and restored automatically with first run script.
pbs data lives on zfs hdd pool.
which technically of course could be ran manually after install.
i backup /etc and some other folders daily during runtime. restore during runtime is also no problem, but i've only done it for the relevant files, never the whole folder. as there is other stuff inside which shouldn't be restored, as far as i know.
this works on a new host, if you take care of e.g. eth naming
and i have only single nodes, no cluster!
no regular test. vm live on mirrored nvme zfs pool, i'm only restoring conf files to host ssd.
pbs as worst case fallback, installed on host beside pve. reinstalled and restored automatically with first run script.
pbs data lives on zfs hdd pool.
This script seems related to the installation. I'm not at all looking for a way to reinstall. What I need is a backup/restore of a working Proxmox boot drive, bit for bit - not selectively .
I can do that very easily with various disk imaging software - except not live. It requires me to
1. turn off the Proxmox host
2. physically remove the SATA boot SSD from the hotswap bay
3. move it it in another system (eg. Linux or Windows box)
4. image the SSD to local storage, eg. onto an HDD
5. plug the SSD back into the Proxmox system
6. turn power back on to the Proxmox host
The problem I'm trying to solve is to do the backup live - ie. without steps 1/2/3. Step 1 takes down my entire network, because Proxmox is my router. It's also my Home assistant VM that controls my home lighting, among other things. It's a non-starter.
please read my entire post, especially that part:
i'm not writing about block level backup.
my approach is a highly optimized process for system restore, as hardware independent as possible.
I understand. And what I need is something that can be restored to the original hardware as soon as possible, without reconfiguration. Ie. hardware dependent. Which should be a much simpler problem, in theory. Yet I can't find a way to do it live.
Correct. BUT what I do is; attach a USB drive that has the imaging capabilities (can be any plain Linux with
dd) to the host, reboot into that USB drive, dd the host drive/s, reboot server, job done.This saves most of your above points.
However, I also dream of an online (PVE) method.
No, it does not, unfortunately. The reboot step for backup is a problem. Running a backup should not cut off my entire network and turn my house dark.
There is something called "rear" - or "relax and recover" which is supposed to support live backup. I have never tried it, much less restore. I do have other Linux hosts I could test it on, though. Wondering if anyone has tried it with Proxmox.
Has been discussed, (I believe both in this thread & in others). Never tried by myself, but I would not mind if someone could give me actual current feedback, probably including a restore.
You should not be running a smart eco system that causes that when it is powered down. Smart systems (such as HA) are for automation, loose the system - loose the automation, NOT the ability for the lights to function & their local respective switches to be useable.