Backup of Windows and Linux PCs.

[DarkCorner]

In addition to VMs, can I make backups of Windows 10/11 and Xubuntu/Debian PCs?
If yes, in what way?

Having around 10 VMs and 5 PCs, what configuration should I have?

 

[UdoB]

In addition to VMs, can I make backups of Windows 10/11 and Xubuntu/Debian PCs?

Not easily, no GUI. There is the original package "proxmox-backup-client" for Debian you could use for Bookworm:

~# apt show  proxmox-backup-client
Description: Proxmox Backup Client tools
...
 This package contains the Proxmox Backup client, which provides a
 simple command line tool to create and restore backups.

Usage is a little bit tricky as you need to learn how to create access tokens and so on...

Having around 10 VMs ..., what configuration should I have?

How could we know if the overall data volume is 5 Gigabyte or 5 Petabyte? The more details you attach to a question the higher is the probability for a helpful answer.

The official statement is here: https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/installation.html#recommended-server-system-requirements

Good luck

 

[DarkCorner]

How could we know if the overall data volume is 5 Gigabyte or 5 Petabyte? The more details you attach to a question the higher is the probability for a helpful answer.

Of course, regardless of the capacity of the disks. I was thinking at least 60TB of usable space.
I meant what kind of RAID-Z; how much memory; whether SSD or HDD disks; ...
So, some advice.
I had seen the requirements, but they are only the recommended ones.

I'm still doing the project. There will be a Proxmox VE server with 1 or 2 Windows Server, 2 Win 11 and a dozen Linux VMs. Then there are 5 Win 11 PCs.

For backups, if there is nothing official I can always use other backup software such as Duplicati or Veaam to install on the PC or VM, but do I see the disk space as SMB folders?

 

[UdoB]

I was thinking at least 60TB of usable space.

Okay, this triggers a disclaimer: my own systems are much smaller - so I have no real experience with this size.

I meant what kind of RAID-Z; how much memory; whether SSD or HDD disks;

For the PBS? You already know you should use local SSDs. If the price forbids this I would go for multiple (the more the better) mirrors plus an NVMe (or Sata) SSD mirrored "Special Device". This one can be smaller than one percent of the net capacity. (Re-check this on other sources!).

A rotating-rust-only datastore with this size will probably not work. Actually at first it will work, but when filled with actual data it will fail. Been there, done that - with "only" ~15 TB or so.

And also with this (not officially recommended) approach a restore of large VMs will probably be slow. As the Special Device can speed up meta data handling like directory traversal it can not speed up reading the actual data from the physical disks. Your VMs are smaller, so the worst case won't happen: to read all the data means to read all of the ~ 15 million chunks of that 60 TB, not sequential but in random order! How long would a classic disk take to move the head this often...?

Repeating the documentation: you want a full SSD datastore ;-)

(That said, I personally do run PBS with this construction - with only a fraction of your volume size...)

For backups, if there is nothing official I can always use other backup software such as Duplicati or Veaam to install on the PC or VM, but do I see the disk space as SMB folders?

This is not really clear to me. PBS has no other sharing capabilities than the PVE/PBS protocol. The base OS is Debian Bookworm, so you can "hack" it to run a Samba server - but I would not recommend it... if you're not really sure what you are doing.

If you want to prepare the PBS to be more flexible you can: install a standalone PVE(!) on this hardware, then add PBS in parallel on the same hardware inside the same OS. Then you could add a (PVE-) container running Samba (or anything else).

Note that you are manipulating theses systems drastically, so maintaining and support may be more difficult. (For example: PVE and PBS must be "dist-upgraded" to the next major release at the same time - while they are probably released independently.)

Again: just showing possibilties, this is not a hard recommendation...

 

[DarkCorner]

I have two needs: backing up virtual machines and backing up PCs.
I don't want to change the PBS configuration; if I can't back up PCs with PBS, then I'll use a NAS.

However, I have not yet understood what characteristics PBS must have to backup the VMs.
I will have a maximum of 10 VMs and each of these will have on average 80GB of occupied space; maximum 150GB.

To guarantee backups on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, how many disks will I need to provide? Of what capacity? With what type of RAID-Z?

 

[UdoB]

Of what capacity?

How could I know that? Only you will learn the amount of changed data during an interval.

With what type of RAID-Z?

None. Use only, only, only Mirrors! At least for rotating rust. Any RaidZ will get you into trouble on the long run...