General inquiry on common implementations of backup/verification with PBS...

[kernull]

I plan to experiment with implementing PBS in backing up (encrypted) essential virtual machines to multiple locations and wanted to ask about methods of backup verification. Does PBS offer or has anyone put together methods of automating the verification of backups in any way?

Ive been in a few scenarios where companies thought things were backed up and it wasnt till things were down and damaged that they found out the backups were no good or in some cases weren't even happening.

What are common methods (beyond hashing?) for verifying VMs that are backed up and moved around can be successfully restored?

thanks for reading

 

[fabian]

the only surefire way is extensive, regular restore testing (anything other than that only verifies that the backup as it was made hasn't been corrupted after the fact, but that does not help if the backup had the wrong content in the first place..)

 

[kernull]

the only surefire way is extensive, regular restore testing (anything other than that only verifies that the backup as it was made hasn't been corrupted after the fact, but that does not help if the backup had the wrong content in the first place..)

Yea i agree with restore testing, I guess I'm interested in figuring out how feasible it is to automate this, at least automate the restore in a particular environment then execute some sort of VM specific test on each one...

 

[fabian]

there are several things you can do:
- automate restore into scratch VM using CLI/API
- if the VM has the qemu guest agent configured, you can then start it (provided that doesn't cause issues in your network!) and execute commands using the guest agent in an automated fashion

or:
- map the backup as block device(s) (either on the PVE host, or inside a VM you setup for that purpose) - "proxmox-backup-client map ..."
- mount the block devices
- check the contents of the mount point

or:
- use proxmox-file-restore (it basically does the previous scenario, but in a more streamlined fashion)

still, a manual real restore test every once in a while is a different kind of test that is probably still worth your while.