A question about backup integrity with my set up

[foxyproxy]

I have PBS running with an external USB docking station containing an 8TB drive (drive A).

In order to do offsite backup rotations, what I did first was a full backup of proxmox VM's and containers to PBS 8TB drive A. I then cloned the drive to another 8TB drive B.

Once I week, I shut down PBS, I swap drive A and drive B around and then let backups run as usual. As far as PBS is concerned, it thinks it's the same drive, however, each drive has different backup sets.

Is doing things this way OK? I am not sure about the diff algorithm PBS is using to determine differences, but I thought here would be a good place to find out.

Thank you for your time.

 

[Dunuin]

I think a better way would be to have different datastores for those different disks. Also keep in mind that you have to regularly run GC and verify jobs and those will run very long (days?) when not using SSDs.

I am not sure about the diff algorithm PBS is using to determine differences, but I thought here would be a good place to find out.

PBS isn't doing differential backups. All backups are full backups. They are incremental because of the deduplication as nothing will be stored twice.

 

[news]

@foxyproxy use ZFS with Raid1 or RaidZ1 with additional ZFS SSD, NVMe Special Device as ZFS with Raid1 or RaidZ1 als Basefilesystem. then you can replicate the Backup to an other Proxmox BS on a different location.

 

[foxyproxy]

Actua

I think a better way would be to have different datastores for those different disks. Also keep in mind that you have to regularly run GC and verify jobs and those will run very long (days?) when not using SSDs.

PBS isn't doing differential backups. All backups are full backups. They are incremental because of the deduplication as nothing will be stored twice.

Actually, deduplication and garbage collection take about 8 hours combined so it's not too bad.

The problem with having different data stores is that I need to change the backup job destination drive in proxmox every time I swap the disks around. I did this before and it was just more pain to deal with, not to mention remembering to do it.

Thanks for your reply, much appreciated.

 

[Dunuin]

Actually, deduplication and garbage collection take about 8 hours combined so it's not too bad.

And they are already full? Because here a full re-verify + GC of 8 GB would quite take some time.