Convert PBS backup/vm snapshot to regular Proxmox backup

[bomzh]

Hello,

I'm wondering if there's any known procedure to create regular (i.e. vm-123.tar.zst) VM backup file from existent backups of that VM that's housed on Proxmox Backup Server? There's simple use-case for this - we have cluster with many VMs running and all of them get backup'ed on central PBS server. Now we want to take several old VM backups from PBS, put them as regular Proxmox backup (single file archive) and store it elsewhere for archive purposes. I know it would be possible to restore required old PBS backup snapshot and then do regular backup of the VM using Proxmox's regular backup task, but this involves some extra steps we would like to avoid.

Thanks in advance for any help and pointers!

 

[Dunuin]

They are working on implementing a VZDump import function to PBS. Not sure if they also want to add an export function. For archival purposes, there are tape and syncing to another slower archival PBS. Best place for feature requests is the bug tracker: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com

 

[VictorSTS]

For that very same use case I use an archival PBS because:
- it's space efficiency vs classic vzdump (deduplication+compression).
- can rsync from main PBS to archival and viceversa easily without transferring a big file around.
- easy restore to a PVE if needed without transferring a big file around.
- permissions, backup existence and verify checks (a file is just a file, anyone could access it, may get corrupt over time and no one will notice).

Still I have another use case: when I want to move a backup from a source PBS to another PBS or PVE and connectivity among source and destination isn't available / too slow. If I could export the backup to a vzdump I could send it using some (encrypted) removable media without having to restore to a local PVE first and then create the backup.

 

[Dunuin]

What they are also working on is archiving backups to external disks in addition to the tapes. Right now disk rotation is quite a pain with PBS. Maybe when they add this as well as some cloud storage support, that VZDump export isn't that important anymore?

 

[bomzh]

For that very same use case I use an archival PBS because:

That's OK when you can have such archival PBS instance running somehwere else.
Our case in particular: the company running Proxmox cluster and it's PBS server is ceasing it's operations literally, shutting down all hardware on remote location (datacenter). There's a small chance that some data may need to be recovered from the VMs on that cluster in the future. So that's why we only need a full classic backup of some VMs and place them somewhere on local storage.

 

[bomzh]

What they are also working on is archiving backups to external disks in addition to the tapes. Right now disk rotation is quite a pain with PBS. Maybe when they add this as well as some cloud storage support, that VZDump export isn't that important anymore?

Thanks. I guess right now the only way to solve this task it to
1) restore VM from PBS snapshot somewhere on Proxmox node
2) backup restored VM using default Proxmox backup method (single file archive)
3) fetch that VM backup archive file and purge the VM

Will try to post feature request on Bugzilla.
Thanks for responses!