How to initiate incremental backup of filesystem using proxmox backup client?

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nikhilbhalwankar

Active Member
Jun 8, 2019
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I have a filesystem backup worth 10 TB on proxmox backup server. Its around 2 months old. I initiated backup again yesterday. However it looks like it has automatically triggerred full backup insetad of incremental backup.

I will be shifting the proxmox backup server to another data center and I don't want the full filesystem backup to be initiated over the network. How to make sure that only incremental filesystem backup gets initiated everytime I start backup?
 
Chris said:
Hi, you can use the change-detection-mode parameter for proxmox-backup-client and set it to metadata. That should significantly speed up you filesystem backups, after an initial backup run using that mode (which requires a full re-scan). For details see https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/backup-client.html#change-detection-mode
Click to expand...
Many thanks for the inputs. I tested it out and works very well. However I observed one behaviour while backing up multiple file systems of same server under single namespace of Proxmox backup server as follows,

1) Initiate backup of file system /abc from server S1 using metadata mode on Proxmox backup server with root namespace. Runs a full backup first time.

2) Initiate backup of file system /xyz from server S1 using metadata mode on Proxmox backup server with root namespace. Runs a full backup first time.

3) Now again run backup of file system /abc from server S1 using metadata mode on Proxmox backup server with root namespace. it does not detect previous snapshot and initiates full backup again. Is it due to the case that the last latest successful backup detected is of /xyz file system?

I tried separating these backups with seperate namespaces then. This triggered incremental backup of /abc filesystem correctly when run for the second time. Is this the expected behaviour?
 
nikhilbhalwankar said:
Many thanks for the inputs. I tested it out and works very well. However I observed one behaviour while backing up multiple file systems of same server under single namespace of Proxmox backup server as follows,

1) Initiate backup of file system /abc from server S1 using metadata mode on Proxmox backup server with root namespace. Runs a full backup first time.

2) Initiate backup of file system /xyz from server S1 using metadata mode on Proxmox backup server with root namespace. Runs a full backup first time.

3) Now again run backup of file system /abc from server S1 using metadata mode on Proxmox backup server with root namespace. it does not detect previous snapshot and initiates full backup again. Is it due to the case that the last latest successful backup detected is of /xyz file system?
Click to expand...
Yes, the previous snapshot of the group is used as reference for the metadata lookups if using change-detection-mode set to metadata. If that does not include the archive, the client will fallback to perform a backup without the metadata comparison.
nikhilbhalwankar said:
I tried separating these backups with seperate namespaces then. This triggered incremental backup of /abc filesystem correctly when run for the second time. Is this the expected behaviour?
Click to expand...
Yes, you have 2 options here:
  • Include both archives in the same backup snapshot by providing multiple archive names and source paths, e.g. proxmox-backup-client backup abc.pxar:/abc xyz.pxar:/xyz ...
  • Backup to different namespaces, so the snapshots are not interwoven, see https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/storage.html#backup-namespaces
 
or a third option - specify `--backup-id` to have the backup group named after something other than the local hostname ;)
 
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Hi Fabian,

Now that I have not added the backup id option, if I mount the same filesystem on another machine and initiate the filesystem backup with the auto-generated backup id of previous backup shown under proxmo backup web ui, will it detect the backup as incremental?
 
the --backup-type ("host" by default) and --backup-id (the hostname by default) parameters together make up the backup group, and the client will download the previous snapshot in that group if it exists to use as base for an incremental backup, so yes, that should work.
 
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