I'm looking for the best backup solution

[why-be-banned]

Hello everyone, I'm looking for the best backup solution.

My PVE is installed on a 2TB SSD, and my virtual machine disks total about 1TB in size.
I also have a 2TB mechanical hard drive for storing backup files.

What is the best method for backing up PVE virtual machine?

1. PBS doesn't seem suitable for me. I don't have extra money to buy a standalone machine to run a PBS server, and according to the official documentation, PBS should run on an SSD for good performance.

2. Format a 2TB mechanical hard drive to EXT4 and mount it in PVE for storing backup files. This way, there is no incremental backup feature, and each backup will generate a backup file of the entire size.

3. Third-party software, such as VEEAM, but it seems it cannot back up things on lvm-thin.

Is there any other better way?

 

[leesteken]

If you intend to keep backups on the same system and incremental (so each depends on others) then I think you are talking about snapshot: use a suitable storage type. For backups, use something like the 3-2-1 rule.

 

[why-be-banned]

If you intend to keep backups on the same system and incremental (so each depends on others) then I think you are talking about snapshot: use a suitable storage type. For backups, use something like the 3-2-1 rule.

not on the same system, I want to place backups on another hard drive so that I can recover data if the system drive broken.

 

[Johannes S]

Hello everyone, I'm looking for the best backup solution.

My PVE is installed on a 2TB SSD, and my virtual machine disks total about 1TB in size.
I also have a 2TB mechanical hard drive for storing backup files.

What is the best method for backing up PVE virtual machine?

1. PBS doesn't seem suitable for me. I don't have extra money to buy a standalone machine to run a PBS server, and according to the official documentation, PBS should run on an SSD for good performance.

You could setup PBS in a vm on your Proxmox host or in a NAS. That's not recommendes but would work if you passthrough your hard drive to the PBS vm. Please note that using external drives is not supported in the PBS GUI so you would need the CLI to nount and unmount it.

3. Third-party software, such as VEEAM, but it seems it cannot back up things on lvm-thin.

you could treat the the vms like bare metal servers and install your backup Software direct on the vm.

Another Option would be to have a PBS vm for single-file restore and pseudo-snapshots and another Software or Proxmox native vzdump for a backup on a external drive.