can we use ZFS storage as backup storage

[Neox]

When I setup a ZFS storage on my Proxmox cluster I can only tick "VM disks and Container"
I'm partition based as my system is also running from the hard drive as raid partition.

Is it possible to use a zfs storage for local backup or do I need to repartition my hardrive to add local raid5 (or LVM) and ext4 storage for my backups ?

My cluster is 3 machines with

Proxmox VE 7.1.7
Xeon(R) CPU D-1521 (4Cores/8Threads)
4x2TB Sata Drive
32GB RAM ECC

 

[fabian]

you can create a dataset and then configure a directory storage for that dataset's mountpoint (be sure to set 'is_mountpoint' in storage.cfg so that PVE knows it should only treat this dir storage as active if something is mounted there).

 

[Neox]

you can create a dataset and then configure a directory storage for that dataset's mountpoint (be sure to set 'is_mountpoint' in storage.cfg so that PVE knows it should only treat this dir storage as active if something is mounted there).

that nearly what I have found and then done (on my test lab)
just create a directory inside a dataset, and ask PVE to use it as "storage -> directory"

that's a bit strange but it works, and within the zroot, you can assign quota to a dataset, thus to the directory below

 

[fabian]

in that case, I'd still set 'is_mountpoint' to the path of the mountpoint under your subdirectory (e.g., if your main ZFS storage is 'pool/data' mounted on /data, and you created a directory storage for the subdir /data/dirstorage, you'd put '/data' as 'is_mountpoint' value), so that PVE doesn't race against that and create directories then blocking ZFS from being mounted..

 

[Neox]

in that case, I'd still set 'is_mountpoint' to the path of the mountpoint under your subdirectory (e.g., if your main ZFS storage is 'pool/data' mounted on /data, and you created a directory storage for the subdir /data/dirstorage, you'd put '/data' as 'is_mountpoint' value), so that PVE doesn't race against that and create directories then blocking ZFS from being mounted..

do I need to do this by touching a file inside the /data or do I need to edit the storage.cfg ?

 

[fabian]

storage.cfg (or set it via 'pvesm') - the GUI doesn't expose that setting (yet)

 

[Neox]

for someone arrived here, pvesm command is as follow

pvesm set STORAGE_NAME -is_mountpoint yes

make /etc/pve/storage.cfg looks like, with added is_mountpoint yes

dir: STORAGE_NAME path /path/to/my/directory content images,vztmpl,snippets,iso,backup,rootdir is_mountpoint yes prune-backups keep-all=1 shared 0