How to Do incremental Restore using Proxmox Backup server 3.4.0

internalit

New Member
Mar 25, 2025
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Hi All,
we want to know if its possible to do a incremental restore using PBS
if yes how to do that
can someone pls provides us the STEPS

thanks
 
Hi,
all backup snapshots in PBS are self contained, they are not inter-dependent when it comes to restore. So you can just restore the one snapshot you would like to restore directly.
 
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Objective​


Our goal is to enable incremental failback from an offsite (cloud) PBS to an on-premises Proxmox VE environment, minimizing restore time by transferring only the changed data back to the original VM.




Scenario Tested​


  • We have a VM with ID 104 originally hosted on-premises.
  • A backup was taken and stored in Cloud PBS during a disaster recovery scenario.
  • The VM was fully restored in the cloud using that backup.
  • A new backup was then taken from the cloud PBS after some changes.
  • Now, the on-prem VM 104 still exists, and we want to fail back incrementally using the cloud PBS backup.



Findings​


  • Restoring to the same VM ID in Proxmox requires deleting the existing VM first, which results in a full restore.
  • Restoring to a different VM ID always creates a new VM, which is also a full restore.

In both cases, the existing VM is not updated incrementally — it is replaced or recreated.

is that possible to do a incremental restore?
 
no.
The way is local PBS.
and an external/cloud PBS.

edit : or skip PBS then use ZFS send/receive.
we have to use two PBS servers?

1 on prem and other on cloud?
but how we can do incremental restore? is there any documentation i can follow?
 
Last edited:
let me recap

i need to install two PBS servers
1) on prem
2) on cloud

on the on CLOUD PBS i should add the ONPREM PBS as remote and sync jobs from on prem to cloud?
and in case of disaster i can restore the jobs on cloud using cloud pbs?


but in case of failback?
i need to add on cloud PBS as remote in on Prem PBS and sync jobs? and then restore? will it be incremental restore or full?
 
Last edited:
is that possible to do a incremental restore?
You might be able to achieve what you want using the single file restore feature, which allows to download parts of the filesystem of a VM as zip or tar archive. You will however have to copy and place the files into your VM manually, there is currently no agent like feature which would achieve this. Another option might be to mount the backup snapshot inside the VM and copy files based on that, this however depends on your VM, as the proxmox backup client is only available for linux systems at the moment.
 
yes if you want the fastest restore.

then external/cloud PBS will Remote Sync / pull backups from the Local PBS.

https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/managing-remotes.html
let me recap

i need to install two PBS servers
1) on prem
2) on cloud

on the on CLOUD PBS i should add the ONPREM PBS as remote and sync jobs from on prem to cloud?
and in case of disaster i can restore the jobs on cloud using cloud pbs?


but in case of failback?
i need to add on cloud PBS as remote in on Prem PBS and sync jobs? and then restore?