How to backup PVE/Ceph nodes

[sherminator]

Hi there,

we would like to have a file based backup of our three PVE/Ceph nodes. The goal is to have everything needed to bring back one or more nodes from zero to the current state (except VM data of course). What do you suggest which files and directories we should backup?

Thanks and greets
Stephan

 

[oguz]

hi,

The goal is to have everything needed to bring back one or more nodes from zero to the current state

you'll probably want everything in /etc/ so that you can restore PVE configuration (/etc/pve and network configs (/etc/network/interfaces, /etc/hosts and so on). /etc also has important files for your system like /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow.

you can also include /var/lib/pve-cluster/, which has the config.db files. that db file is where the fuse filesystem in /etc/pve is stored -- with that you can restore your VM configurations to another node without quorum as well.

you might also want any cron jobs you configured, and also the /root directory if you have anything there.

i also suggest testing your backup to see if it works as you expect (you can try restoring it in a VM running PVE or a sacrificial host)

hope this helps!

 

[velocity08]

hi,


you'll probably want everything in /etc/ so that you can restore PVE configuration (/etc/pve and network configs (/etc/network/interfaces, /etc/hosts and so on). /etc also has important files for your system like /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow.

you can also include /var/lib/pve-cluster/, which has the config.db files. that db file is where the fuse filesystem in /etc/pve is stored -- with that you can restore your VM configurations to another node without quorum as well.

you might also want any cron jobs you configured, and also the /root directory if you have anything there.

i also suggest testing your backup to see if it works as you expect (you can try restoring it in a VM running PVE or a sacrificial host)

hope this helps!

Thanks @oguz

this was something we are also looking at so was good to see there is some information out there.

We are also using PBS in our setup, what would be excellent if there was a backup template for PVE to push all required backup data to PBS or some other network share from within the PVE GUI so that its a 1 click backup process once the backup storage has been configured.

This would also work in reverse if you needed to quickly restore a Node/ Host once the ISO was installed for PVE + backup storage added back you could do a restore of the config files etc.

would make backup/ restore a simple quick process to recover from a disaster.

thoughts?

""Cheers
G

 

[William Edwards]

Proxmox VE is pretty stateless when it comes to node-specific configurations. I think you'd be better off implementing configuration management.