compatible pbs vs pve ?

[CAHEKs]

What table of version compatilbe between pbs and pve?

	pve6	pve7
pbs1
pbs2

 

[t.lamprecht]

You can tick all in that table currently, they're all compatible in regards to sending new backups and listing/restoring existing ones, and that will stay that way at least until EOL of Proxmox Backup Server 1.1 and Proxmox VE 6.4 in July 2022 (after that we do not really test and look on the old releases, so while it may work just fine there could be some breakage, albeit we certainly do not break it by force and major changes are normally tied to major version releases).

So, they should all stay compatible, albeit older clients may naturally not use all new features of a newer server and vice versa, but that's already the case with minor releases too.

 

[Chicken76]

This thread needs to be resurrected now that we have PVE8 and PBS3.
So what does the compatibility matrix look like currently?

 

[t.lamprecht]

I made some related comments about this here:
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/proxmox-backup-server-3-0-available.129717/#post-568741
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/u...tible-with-proxmox-ve-8-0.132991/#post-585500

And I thought I had a better post w.r.t. this around, but could not find it.
We really need to better encode the answer to this compatibility question and our general guarantees in the documentation's FAQ.

Backup protocol and format did not change, so there's still full forward and backward compatibility in regard to that.
Proxmox Backup Server 2.2 added the support for namespaces, Proxmox VE 6 can only back up to the root namespace and also only restore from that, nothing change w.r.t. this in Proxmox Backup Server 3, i.e., for Proxmox VE 6 the same limitations as previous still hold (it's EOL after all), but newest Proxmox VE 7 and Proxmox VE 8 can use all features from both Proxmox Backup Server 2 and 3.

In general, we will:
- keep support for reading older backup formats, if we ever need/want to introduce a new one, so restoring existing backups made to new systems will always work.
- try hard to keep backward compatibility for the protocol to create and read (restore) backups, at least for the current and last matching releases we will guarantee that. Meaning, a client that is one major release behind should be still able to back up and restore what they could do previously from a server that is the same major version, or one version older or one major version newer, but not necessarily if the server is two major versions newer. E.g., while currently one can still backup from Proxmox VE 6 to Proxmox Backup Server 3, which is two major versions newer, that might change with future PBS 3.x point releases; albeit it's not planned and if there isn't a good reason/benefit we won't just break it.
- ensure that the Proxmox Backup Server API stays compatible for the current and the previous matching Proxmox VE release, older might continue to work, but that's supported on a best-effort basis.

So the more permanent table could look like the following, where Proxmox Backup Server X and Proxmox VE Y are based on the same Debian major release.

Backup / Restore	Proxmox VE Y - 1	Proxmox VE Y	Proxmox VE Y + 1
Proxmox Backup Server X - 1	Full Support	All but new major Features	Best Effort
Proxmox Backup Server X	All but new major Features	Full Support	All but new major Features
Proxmox Backup Server X + 1	Best Effort	All but new major Features	Full Support

 

[Chicken76]

Thank you for clearing things up.

I still have a question: what does the line "Co-installed Proxmox Backup Server: see the Proxmox Backup Server 2 to 3 upgrade how-to" mean in the prerequisites section of the PVE 7-to-8 guide? At first glance it sounds like PBS needs to be upgraded to v3 before upgrading PVE to v8.

 

[t.lamprecht]

At first glance it sounds like PBS needs to be upgraded to v3 before upgrading PVE to v8.

Could be worded a bit better maybe, but what it essentially means is that you need to upgrade both at the same go, i.e., once you move the repositories from bullseye to bookworm, you need to do that for all repos at the same time before you then do the final update + full-upgrade (or dist-upgrade, that's just an alias).

We link to the other wiki so that users can be aware of product specific known issues and the product specific checker tools, i.e., those that have both Proxmox Backup Server and Proxmox VE installed on the exact same host (i.e., not just having PBS in a VM or CT hosted on Proxmox VE, that's totally fine and unrelated to each other) need to adhere both upgrade guides and do the actual repo switch in lock step.

 

[Chicken76]

Could be worded a bit better maybe, but what it essentially means is that you need to upgrade both at the same go, i.e., once you move the repositories from bullseye to bookworm, you need to do that for all repos at the same time before you then do the final update + full-upgrade (or dist-upgrade, that's just an alias).

We link to the other wiki so that users can be aware of product specific known issues and the product specific checker tools, i.e., those that have both Proxmox Backup Server and Proxmox VE installed on the exact same host (i.e., not just having PBS in a VM or CT hosted on Proxmox VE, that's totally fine and unrelated to each other) need to adhere both upgrade guides and do the actual repo switch in lock step.

I see now. It refers to PVE and PBS running side-by-side on the same installation of Debian. You definitely don't need to upgrade a separate machine running PBS 2.4 to 3 before upgrading PVE 7 to 8.

 

[t.lamprecht]

I see now. It refers to PVE and PBS running side-by-side on the same installation of Debian. You definitely don't need to upgrade a separate machine running PBS 2.4 to 3 before upgrading PVE 7 to 8.

Exactly.