Changing the way I do backups

[jHorrocks]

I have a PVE in production that I create storage to my home office PBS. All works great but because my home office has a dynamic IP sometimes the IP isn't correct even if my dyndns updater is running every 5 mins from my home office.

So I have decided to add an enterprise SSD to the PVE production server and have created a PBS VM on this server and mount the USB and first do a backup from PVE Production to PBS Production and then using my home office server, setup a remote to the PBS Production and schedule a sync job.

All works ok testing but my question is:

What format should the USB SSD drive be in?

My PVE server is running on RAID 10 ZFS along with my home server PBS so shall I format the USB SSD as ZFS or ext4?

Is there any difference in performance, reliability etc...?

Thanks in advance for any info..... LOVING PROXMOX....!

 

[Chris]

I have a PVE in production that I create storage to my home office PBS. All works great but because my home office has a dynamic IP sometimes the IP isn't correct even if my dyndns updater is running every 5 mins from my home office.

So I have decided to add an enterprise SSD to the PVE production server and have created a PBS VM on this server and mount the USB and first do a backup from PVE Production to PBS Production and then using my home office server, setup a remote to the PBS Production and schedule a sync job.

All works ok testing but my question is:

What format should the USB SSD drive be in?

My PVE server is running on RAID 10 ZFS along with my home server PBS so shall I format the USB SSD as ZFS or ext4?

Is there any difference in performance, reliability etc...?

Thanks in advance for any info..... LOVING PROXMOX....!

Hi,

PBS is agnostic to what underlying filesystem you are using. ZFS is always a good option, but with only one disk you loose a lot of its capabilities. Nevertheless you get checksumming, the flexibility regarding datasets, zfs send/recv capabilities ecc. From a simple performance point of view you might be better of with a ext4 filesystem.

In any case, you should setup periodic verify jobs on both of your PBS instances, to early detect bad chunks, which gets even more important if your underlying storage has no redundancy.

 

[jHorrocks]

Chris..... you superstar!

Great info and answered my question very clearly, thanks buddy

One question I forgot to ask is if a VM on the PVE production server goes down (for whatever reason) and I need to restore from the USB SSD, is it better if the backups were in ZFS or does it not make a difference?

 

[Jarvar]

Chris..... you superstar!

Great info and answered my question very clearly, thanks buddy

One question I forgot to ask is if a VM on the PVE production server goes down (for whatever reason) and I need to restore from the USB SSD, is it better if the backups were in ZFS or does it not make a difference?

Hi @jHorrocks I'm not sure if this is the answer you were looking for. I have a similar setup.

If you setup and are restoring from PBS, then you'll need to setup the PBS VM or container first before restoring.
It is my understanding that PVE is not able to read from PBS backups directly. If you made a regular full individual backups of the VM to a USB drive, then you could restore those directly into PVE once the USB drive was connected to PVE. I have my USB Drives with ZFS Setup but haven't really experienced a real performance hit or boost, albeit I only have one USB SSD which I have tried it on, two others are on spinning disks.

The underlying ZFS for the PBS backups does not have real benefit unless you're also using it to make snapshots of the datasets, sending and receive to the drive directly.

 

[jHorrocks]

Hi @jHorrocks I'm not sure if this is the answer you were looking for. I have a similar setup.

If you setup and are restoring from PBS, then you'll need to setup the PBS VM or container first before restoring.
It is my understanding that PVE is not able to read from PBS backups directly. If you made a regular full individual backups of the VM to a USB drive, then you could restore those directly into PVE once the USB drive was connected to PVE. I have my USB Drives with ZFS Setup but haven't really experienced a real performance hit or boost, albeit I only have one USB SSD which I have tried it on, two others are on spinning disks.

The underlying ZFS for the PBS backups does not have real benefit unless you're also using it to make snapshots of the datasets, sending and receive to the drive directly.

Thanks @Jarvar for your info, I know it is not the correct way to back up locally first but right now it is my only option and then sync to my office which is ok for me.

What I am not 100% understanding is your last sentence:
"The underlying ZFS for the PBS backups does not have real benefit unless you're also using it to make snapshots of the datasets, sending and receive to the drive directly."

When I make a schedule backup job of the VM's on Production, the backup job is set to "Snapshot" Mode, is this what you mean?

If yes, then it means I need to format the SSD in ZFS if I want to use Snapshot mode right?

Regards

J

 

[Dunuin]

Thanks @Jarvar for your info, I know it is not the correct way to back up locally first but right now it is my only option and then sync to my office which is ok for me.

What I am not 100% understanding is your last sentence:
"The underlying ZFS for the PBS backups does not have real benefit unless you're also using it to make snapshots of the datasets, sending and receive to the drive directly."

When I make a schedule backup job of the VM's on Production, the backup job is set to "Snapshot" Mode, is this what you mean?

If yes, then it means I need to format the SSD in ZFS if I want to use Snapshot mode right?

Regards

J

No, only the storage on the PVE node where you store your VMs/LXCs needs snapshot support for that.

 

[jHorrocks]

No, only the storage on the PVE node where you store your VMs/LXCs needs snapshot support for that.

So my server already is in RAID10 ZFS that holds all the VM disks, so you mean "No" I dont need to format the SSD as ZFS?

 

[Dunuin]

So my server already is in RAID10 ZFS that holds all the VM disks, so you mean "No" I dont need to format the SSD as ZFS?

Yes, not required.

 

[jHorrocks]

Yes, not required.

Thank you very much @Dunuin and everyone else for the help, Proxmox is great product backed by a great "VERY" helpful community.

Thanks again

 

[Dunuin]

But keep in mind that PBS isn't using backup archives. If you sync your PBS datastore to your office and you lose your PBS, you can't access your backups. Without a running PBS the backups are useless.

 

[jHorrocks]

But keep in mind that PBS isn't using backup archives. If you sync your BPS datastore to your office and you lose your PBS, you can't access your backups. Without a running PBS the backups are useless.

Oh...

I previously posted in this forum a question regarding backing up to multiple PBS and how it was slow if keep changing from PBS1 to PBS2 because of dirty bitmap so the recommendation was to sync between the two:

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/multiple-backup-locations.134894/#post-596506

Am I right is saying the following?:
1 - PVE Production backs up to PBS Production VM to the local SSD
2 - PBS Office uses remote sync to pull down the backups to the Office PBS
3 - Then if the PBS Production SSD or VM fails in anyway, I cannot use the sync'd backups from PBS Office?

 

[Dunuin]

Am I right is saying the following?:
1 - PVE Production backs up to PBS Production VM to the local SSD
2 - PBS Office uses remote sync to pull down the backups to the Office PBS
3 - Then if the PBS Production SSD or VM fails in anyway, I cannot use the sync'd backups from PBS Office?

That should work fine as then the second PBS in the office is still running. But some people don't got a second PBS and just sync the files via rsync or similar to some cloud storage and then the backups of the backups wouldn't be usable in case the only PBS fails.

 

[jHorrocks]

That should work fine as then the second PBS in the office is still running. But some people don't got a second PBS and just sync the files via rsync or similar to some cloud storage and then the backups of the backups wouldn't be usable in case the only PBS fails.

Ok, got you. Thanks for your help.