Backing up boot device with dd

[ronneyb]

So I found that shutting down pve and using dd to copy the boot device will make a backup. After the dd image was created, I used gparted to wipe the partitions of the original boot drive, then dd'd the image back to the original boot drive. Rebooted and everything came back up hunky dorey. This worked on a system with ext4 and lvm. It also worked on a btrfs boot device.

 

[esi_y]

I guess that will always work, but it's a bit of an overkill. All you should really need is back up /var/lib/pve-cluster/config.db (boot off different system or shut down pmxcfs service before doing so).

Then on any fresh install, just implant it in place. If you plan to do this often, just set yourself up an unattended one:
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Automated_Installation

It's going to be a couple of MBs backup and an ISO. This assumes you are backing up VMs separately.