Backup NSS filesystem with Proxmox Backup Server ?

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theansweris42

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Jan 24, 2024
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Hello everyone,

We are very active in the former Novell, now MicroFocus OpenText, sector.
As a result, we have many customers, some with very extensive eDirectories, as well as Open Enterprise Servers based on Suse Linux SLES 15.
We have now migrated many of these customers from VMware single systems and VMware clusters to corresponding Proxmox systems and clusters.
Now, of course, we also want to migrate/simplify the backup solution from various platforms to PBS.
We are currently running a PBS in a pilot project as a VM in a Proxmox 3-node cluster with datastores on NFS, SMB, and iSCSI.
Backups via PBS are problem-free and work cleanly and error-free.
However, we have found that the pools and volumes of an OES (Open Enterprise Server) cannot be backed up as file system backups with PBS, which consequently rules out the use of PBS under OES with an NSS file system.
The question is, is there anyone here who is using this productively, or is backing up NSS file systems on PBS's roadmap?

Perhaps we've simply overlooked something and would be truly grateful for any crucial information.

Thank you for your answers and suggestions!

Regards
Thomas
 
No one here who could answer my question?
I received an email reply from a user named "news", but I don't see his reply here.
The user "news" asked why we want to use an NSS file system. We should simply use ZFS and that would be fine.

For the user "news"

My question isn't about running PBS on an NSS file system. Rather, we want to back up a Suse Linux Enterprise (SLES15 SP6 with OES extension from MicroFocus) VM running as a VM in a Proxmox cluster with shared Storage on ZFS Filesystem.
From this backup, we not only want to restore the entire VM (this works great with PBS), but we also want to be able to perform a single file restore from the backup.
The VM has an NSS file system (not ext4, not xfs, not any other Linux Filesystem...).
But that doesn't work because the VM's NSS file system isn't recognized by PBS.

If any of the developers are reading this:
Can PBS back up an NSS file system, or is this planned or on a roadmap?
If not, is there a feature list where such a thing can be suggested?

Thanks for your feedback.

Regards
Thomas
 
Don't think this can be easily accomplished. If it's not supported by a standard linux kernel then it most likely will never be implemented by PBS.
NSS doesn't seem to be open source either so MicroFocus would have to provide a plugin for PBS which will also not happen.

Your best bet is to sync the content of the NSS file system to another VM with a PBS supported file system, use the backup solution that MicroFocus supplies or a vendor that supports backing up NSS file systems (does that even exist?).
 
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You vould try to open a feature request on https://bugzilla.proxmox.com to get a Statement from the PBS developers. I wouldn't hold my breath though, I would expect s3-Support in PBS before NSS since it's already in the Roadmap for sone years. And even that feature has no ETA at the moment
 
Thanks to MarkusKo and Johannes S.
Your answers were very helpful.

@MarkusKo, your suggestion about syncing to another VM is a good one; we've already implemented this workflow as one of several redundant storage locations. Using it as a source for a single file restore hadn't occurred to me until now.
@Johannes S, yes, I think that will take a while, considering S3 has been on the roadmap for a while but no ETA exists.

For general information:
We are currently backing up NSS via SEP sesam. However, this is done via an agent on the respective VM and is performed via eDirectory and a TSA agent.
However, if I've understood correctly since then, an agent-based backup is not planned for PVE/PBS.
Unfortunately, we cannot back up entire VMs under SEP sesam because our storage, like many of our customer storages, is based on ZFS over iSCSI. This is typically due to the fact that many migrated VMware systems were connected to such storages and, of course, still are after a migration.
Unfortunately, SEP sesam cannot backup via iSCSI over ZFS and then falls back to vzdump.
For this, however, we prefer to use PVE Backup or now PBS.
 
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Another solution would be to use Veeam Agent, there seems to be some support for NSS (some limitations with restoring permissions?)

But Veeam for Proxmox VE is somewhat more of a beta right now, would hold off till v13. But Installing the Veeam agent inside your vm could do what you need. But that's basically the same solution as your current one with SEP sesam.

*edit*
There is a PBS client agent for different os but i'm not sure it that helps in your case.

Either way most solutions to this require an agent installed in your vm to back up.

This is not as nice and clean as backing up the whole vm on hypervisor level and be able to restore all files from PBS.
 
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