At our workplace, we test backups every month. Currently we do it with Veaam to Vmware ESXi hosts. I use Veeam Instant Recovery jobs to do so. That in tandem with Veeam Virtual Labs make it possible for me to set up a "second site" entirely from backup snapshots. I can enter the environment over IP because I "pre enrolled" a Veeam Virtual Lab Appliance, which takes care of routing and exposing an "access IP address" in our production network.
To explain with a more practical example, let's say I have a database server and I want to test it. I would restore it to a separate network and have it booted. But it also needs DNS and DHCP to work and an ADDC server. Then I'd restore all these VMs, change the VLAN tag, so they won't interfere with production and boot them all up. Then I'd have some other VM/appliance/SDN configuration/... that will give me an access IP. Eg, an IP 192.168.10.244. If you ping to it, it will enter the sandboxed environment an will ping 192.168.10.10 which eg be the real IP address of the database server. So if you SSH to your real database server, you do ssh 192.168.10.10. If you want to enter the database server in the sandboxed environment, you'd ssh to 192.168.10.244. If you'd SSH further to other hosts, the connection will always end up in the sandboxed environment.
I want to do something similar with Proxmox/PBS, but AFAIK it's not possible. What I am missing to do this is:
So for me personally most important, setting a VLAN tag blocks what I'd like to be able to do. The second feature request (checkbox) doesn't really block me, but I have to restore around 15 VMs, if they all (needlessly) keep on pushing over data, the backup server will likely be doing a LOT of IO vs just restoring what the VM requests.
One other possibility would be to completely restore all the VMs I want to test. I'd need another dedicated PVE host though and a like ~40TB of storage extra. The feature requests above would eliminate that need.
To explain with a more practical example, let's say I have a database server and I want to test it. I would restore it to a separate network and have it booted. But it also needs DNS and DHCP to work and an ADDC server. Then I'd restore all these VMs, change the VLAN tag, so they won't interfere with production and boot them all up. Then I'd have some other VM/appliance/SDN configuration/... that will give me an access IP. Eg, an IP 192.168.10.244. If you ping to it, it will enter the sandboxed environment an will ping 192.168.10.10 which eg be the real IP address of the database server. So if you SSH to your real database server, you do ssh 192.168.10.10. If you want to enter the database server in the sandboxed environment, you'd ssh to 192.168.10.244. If you'd SSH further to other hosts, the connection will always end up in the sandboxed environment.
I want to do something similar with Proxmox/PBS, but AFAIK it's not possible. What I am missing to do this is:
- The ability to configure a different the VLAN tag (possibly also vmbr) for the target VM you're going to restore. Ideally, I'd like to attach it to a separate network using SDN.
- Checkbox: only restore blocks requested by target VM.
So for me personally most important, setting a VLAN tag blocks what I'd like to be able to do. The second feature request (checkbox) doesn't really block me, but I have to restore around 15 VMs, if they all (needlessly) keep on pushing over data, the backup server will likely be doing a LOT of IO vs just restoring what the VM requests.
One other possibility would be to completely restore all the VMs I want to test. I'd need another dedicated PVE host though and a like ~40TB of storage extra. The feature requests above would eliminate that need.
