Best Method for Backing up Physical Windows Server?

gameover0

New Member
Nov 16, 2023
1
0
1
I see there is no windows client. What methods are you guys using to backup a Physical server. PBS works great for PVE. I couldn't find any documentation on how to setup to backup a windows host to PBS other than maybe sharing the system over and mounting the folders.
 
I created a Debian 12 pen drive, added the client-only PBS repo and installed the proxmox-backup-client. You can then boot into that Debian and use the proxmox-backup-client to backup any files/folders/block devices to your PBS. So you could either backup the whole physical disks or mount them first and backup individual folders. But yes...not great if you need uptime and backups can't be automated...
 
I see there is no windows client.
Doesn't Windows run Linux, nowadays? It won't be able to make a full system image of course, but you should be able to install the backup client and backup separate directories of the Windows part of the installation without downtime.
 
Virtualize the Windows machine on Proxmox and let PBS backup the VM.
I keep seeing conflicting answers about this. I have a PVE server with some windows server VMs, one has a share drive, etc.. I also have PBS on another physical machine. I am using that to share a drive to the PVE and through PVE backing up the VMs to the PBS. Is this an acceptable method? Can I actually restore these machines? I have just set it all up and am about to test it and make sure I can restore some test VMs but am wondering if other people do this and if there are issues I am not thinking about or better ways to do this. Thanks for any information.
 
what do you mean here ?!
Yeah reading that again I can see how it’s a little confusing. I have a SCSI disk on a NAS that I use as a datastore in my PBS. Then I have a server with PVE installed with a bunch of VMs and a couple of containers. I attached the datastore to the PVE and have a backup job that backs up my VMs and LXCs.
 
The PBS is usually added to a PVE cluster via its API integration, not via a datastore.
Then you get advanced features like single item restores from a virtual disk.
Oh interesting, I will look into that more. Is that different from logging into PVE, selecting Datacenter >> Storage >> Add >> Proxmox Backup Server, and filling that out? I may just have the verbiage wrong, as that is how attached the PBS datastore to my PVE server.
 

About

The Proxmox community has been around for many years and offers help and support for Proxmox VE, Proxmox Backup Server, and Proxmox Mail Gateway.
We think our community is one of the best thanks to people like you!

Get your subscription!

The Proxmox team works very hard to make sure you are running the best software and getting stable updates and security enhancements, as well as quick enterprise support. Tens of thousands of happy customers have a Proxmox subscription. Get yours easily in our online shop.

Buy now!