Difference between Garbage Collection and Prune in Proxmox Backup Server – Best Practices

[Pavitra]

Hello everyone,

I would like to understand the difference between Garbage Collection and Prune in Proxmox Backup Server.

From my understanding, both are related to backup storage management, but I'm not clear on how they differ in practice.

I have a few questions:

What is the exact difference between Prune and Garbage Collection?
When should each one be run?
Is it recommended to schedule both tasks regularly?
Should Garbage Collection always be run after Prune, or are they independent?
What are the best practices for scheduling these tasks in a production environment?

I would appreciate any recommendations or examples of how you schedule these jobs in your PBS deployments.

Thank you!

 

[Johannes S]

What is the exact difference between Prune and Garbage Collection?

Read the manual:
https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/maintenance.html#pruning
https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/maintenance.html#garbage-collection

When should each one be run?

As often as you need it. This depends on how much backups you want to keep, how much storage you have and which storage type.

Is it recommended to schedule both tasks regularly?

Yes, otherwise you would run out of space at some point.

Should Garbage Collection always be run after Prune, or are they independent?

Depends on your usecase and storage. I'm fine with a daily gc job, my prune jobs are configured differently since my offsite PBS has another retention than my local.

What are the best practices for scheduling these tasks in a production environment?

Nobody knows your production except you. Without any details this question can't be answered