[SOLVED] datastore question

[RobFantini]

Hello, we've been using pbs since shortly after it was released. we purchased a new system for pbs so i have some questions.

we have 8 datastores. some of the data is similar in most of them so i want to learn how to use pbs more efficiently.

for instance we have these 2 datastores:
desktops and nextcloud. all of the desktops for each user have some fairly large nextcloud folders . with two datastores there is wasted storeage space I assume.

is the best thing to just make one datastore and have the backups go to that one datastore?

is there a way to subdivide a datastore so that nextcloud and desktops have different retention periods?

 

[Dunuin]

is the best thing to just make one datastore and have the backups go to that one datastore?

If you don't want all data to be stored twice, yes.

is there a way to subdivide a datastore so that nextcloud and desktops have different retention periods?

I hope they will add a feature in the future to create groups inside a single datastore. If you are using the proxmox-backup-client you could use the prune command to use a individual prune like this: proxmox-backup-client prune <group> --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 4 --keep-monthly 3. And if you are using the PVEs webUI, since PVE7.1 / PBS2.1 you can create multiple backup tasks with individual backups retentions. But you need to make sure that a guest isn't part of multiple backup tasks or only the lesser restrictive retention will be used. So you basically want to let PVE and the backup client to initiate the pruning instead of a datastore wide pruning by PBS.

 

[RobFantini]

Hello Dunuin,
thanks for the reply.

I will try using proxmox-backup-client to do the prunes. seems easy enough.