Easiest way to backup..a backup?

[iliadz]

I'm going to migrate some systems, and just to be safe, I would like to offload one of my backups to a Windows or Linux server.

I've searched the naming structure, and copied what I can see is the backup, but it's far too small to be the real thing.

The file system I have the PB backups is ext4 and from what I can see, the backups are located in /mnt/datastore/BACKUP/vm/### where ### is the number of the virtual machine.

The VM that I would like to copy form the backup server has a 256GB hard drive. Of that, at least 20GB is real data.


Something isn't adding up I'm obviously missing the real location or something else is wrong.

I'm guessing this is an easy answer and hopefully solution as well.

 

[louie1961]

I just use Rsync, and copy the entire folder to another NAS

 

[UdoB]

There is no zero-effort solution for this.

PBS stores every single backup in several thousands of "chunks". What you saw in "/mnt/datastore/BACKUP/vm/###" is just the management information, not the data itself.

The correct solution is to build an independent, second PBS and then setup "Remote Sync" - https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/managing-remotes.html

Good luck!

 

[iliadz]

I just use Rsync, and copy the entire folder to another NAS

Sure, I probably should have worded that much differently. I can use scp pretty easily to do this. However, the backup that I am looking at has a 256GB hard drive. Of that, at least 20GB is real data. When I copy that backup, the size on disk is 8MBs. So I am missing the actual data location...
Something isn't adding up

I'll modify my post to reflect his.

 

[_gabriel]

When I copy that backup, the size on disk is 8MBs

This is only the "index" / "map" to real data which is in hidden folder ".chunks" where data is shared with all other backups.

 

[iliadz]

There is no zero-effort solution for this.

PBS stores every single backup in several thousands of "chunks". What you saw in "/mnt/datastore/BACKUP/vm/###" is just the management information, not the data itself.

The correct solution is to build an independent, second PBS and then setup "Remote Sync" - https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/managing-remotes.html

Good luck!

Not looking for the zero effort solution...just looking for THE solution And thanks, seems like this is THE solution.

 

[iliadz]

I just use Rsync, and copy the entire folder to another NAS

Judging from the thread, I don't think that's the way to go... you and I both will want to read the above!

 

[louie1961]

I missed that you were using PBS. It may be easier to do a one time backup direct from Proxmox to an NFS share. I do my backups to a separate NAS, and it creates three files for each VM: a notes file, a log file and compressed backup file. Pretty easy to move only ones I need.

 

[iliadz]

I missed that you were using PBS. It may be easier to do a one time backup direct from Proxmox to an NFS share. I do my backups to a separate NAS, and it creates three files for each VM: a notes file, a log file and compressed backup file. Pretty easy to move only ones I need.

View attachment 74662

Ah, thanks. I will check that out.