Full backup for vm machines of Proxmox VE

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bravo0916

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Jan 29, 2024
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Hello Team,

I have taken daily backup and the mode is snapshot. I would like to take full backup each VM machine. If the SSD is failed where VM data is stored, then I need to copy full backup to new SSD and start it up again. The mode have 3 different types like "snapshotp", "Suspend" and "Stop". The "stop" mode is something like "full" backup meaning?

Regards,
 
bravo0916 said:
The "stop" mode is something like "full" backup meaning?
Click to expand...
Not really but it does guarantee that the VM has nothing in memory that should be written to disk.
bravo0916 said:
The mode have 3 different types like "snapshotp", "Suspend" and "Stop".
Click to expand...
The manual describes the differences between the modes: https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#_backup_modes
The Proxmox web GUI also has Help buttons that will present you with the relevant manual section.
 
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leesteken said:
Not really but it does guarantee that the VM has nothing in memory that should be written to disk.

The manual describes the differences between the modes: https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#_backup_modes
The Proxmox web GUI also has Help buttons that will present you with the relevant manual section.
Click to expand...
Hi leesteken,

Thanks for your quick information. I just went throught the document, but I didn't find these modes were for fullbackup or not. If I restore backup file from thsese 3 modes to new disk, then the system can be started up? Or is there any way to take fullbackup?

Thanks!
 
bravo0916 said:
I just went throught the document, but I didn't find these modes were for fullbackup or not.
Click to expand...
Proxmox does not do incremental backups. They are all full.
bravo0916 said:
If I restore backup file from thsese 3 modes to new disk, then the system can be started up?
Click to expand...
It depends on what the VM did not write to disk. See the remarks about inconsistency in the manual that I linked. Try various backups and try to restore them. Always test your backups by restoring them if you want to make sure.
 
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> Try various backups and try to restore them. Always test your backups by restoring them if you want to make sure

https://github.com/kneutron/ansitest/blob/master/proxmox/proxmox-BULK-RESTORE-VMS--PARALLEL.sh

Utility script. For a full test restore of a typical proxmox homelab, all you need is a sufficiently large disk formatted with XFS. (~2TB or less works for me for a full LXC/VM restore of my primary proxmox, YMMV) - script calculates the max amount of disk space needed for restore without compression. You could technically restore to ZFS if you're not planning on powering on the restored nested VMs

Create a proxmox VM with the vdisk on that large XFS volume, define in-vm network and storage to PBS, edit the script before running. Defaults to restoring everything on the PBS named storage given (it finds the latest-dated snapshot) but for quick tests you can tell it to only restore LXC or only VMs.

The quick sysadmin will notice that the output parallel file can be edited and re-called ;-)
 
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Hi Kingneutron and leestaken,

Thank you very much for your help! I tried to take snapshot first and then tried to delete target VM machine. After that, I tried to restore from snapshot.
It works!
 
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