Export historic backup to image

tinyblob

New Member
May 3, 2022
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As well as using Proxmox Backup Server I also export .vma images from my Proxmox server to keep. I have an older backup in PBS that I want to export as a .vma to keep with my others.

I can't find any way in the documentation to accomplish .vma image exports, or to export historic backups. Is there any way I can accomplish this?

I did wonder about making a new Proxmox server on an old machine, adding PBS, and importing the old backup to it. Then exporting the .vma from there, but I'm hoping there is a quicker and easier solution.
 
currently there is no direct way to export a vma backup from pbs. what you can do is to simply use the proxmox-backup-client to restore the .img files of the vms as well as the config (vma is basically a container around that).
when you do need to restore then, you can simply copy the config and use 'qm importdisk' for the .img files.
 
Thanks dcsapak, .img files would be fine too, I just like to keep generic exports as well as the less-portable pbs backups.

How do I go about using proxmox-backup-client to export specific backups to .img? I can’t seem to see documentation for that. I guess from your comments that invoke a restore but specify a path and format somehow?
 
you can do that with a simple restore:

Code:
proxmox-backup-client restore vm/999/2022-05-02T11:38:06Z drive-scsi0.img /tmp/drive-scsi0.img
 
Thank you! I couldn't see anything about this in the online documentation but I see it in the man file, that's brilliant. Two last questions, if I may:

* You suggested exporting the img and the config, is there a way to export config using this command? Or is the best method to export it from the host (is there a config file perhaps?)
* Does PBS know about configurations historically? If I change something, like a MAC address, do the incremental PBS backups store that setting change too? If so, can I access the VM configuration for a specific historic backup?
 
* You suggested exporting the img and the config, is there a way to export config using this command? Or is the best method to export it from the host (is there a config file perhaps?)
yes, the same way as the img files:
Code:
proxmox-backup-client restore vm/999/2022-05-02T11:38:06Z qemu-server.conf /tmp/999.conf

* Does PBS know about configurations historically? If I change something, like a MAC address, do the incremental PBS backups store that setting change too? If so, can I access the VM configuration for a specific historic backup?
each vm backup contains the complete config as 'qemu-server.conf' (see my command above), so yes if you want to see the config from an older backup, just restore/download that and check it out
if you browse the backups via pve, there is even a button 'show configuration' when selecting a backup
 

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