Multiple PBS's per PVE?

[NAB]

Hi all,
I have two PBS servers and I'd like to add both to my Proxmox box. This is so I can have a completely different backup schedule and retention for on-site backups than off-site backups.
Unfortunately, while I can add the first PBS, when I try to add the second, it tells me that the fingerprint is incorrect - it shows me the fingerprint for the first PBS I added and not the second.
Is this expected behaviour - i.e. is it only permitted to add one PBS per Proxmox PVE server?
Cheers,
Nicholas.

 

[Dunuin]

I have two PBS servers and I'd like to add both to my Proxmox box. This is so I can have a completely different backup schedule and retention for on-site backups than off-site backups.
Unfortunately, while I can add the first PBS, when I try to add the second, it tells me that the fingerprint is incorrect - it shows me the fingerprint for the first PBS I added and not the second.
Is this expected behaviour - i.e. is it only permitted to add one PBS per Proxmox PVE server?

No, you can add as much PBS to PVE as you like. But there are some downsides like when doing a backup to PBS1 and then a backup of the same VM to PBS2 you will drop the dirty-bitmap and the whole VM will have to be read again which makes backups quite slow. Better way would be to always backup to a single onsite PBS and then set up the offsite PBS with a sync job to pull the backups from the onsite PBS.
That way you can better ensure ransomware protection, you won't have the problem with the dropped dirty-bitmaps, the VM won't be slowed down as much while doing backups (VM will first have to write to the PBS before the write to the virtual disk will be acknowledged and this will be slow if your PBS is offsite with internet latency) and it is still possible to have completely different backup retentions for both PBS.
But then you still want the offsite PBS as a storage on your PVE to be able to do restore from offsite (and best case with limited privileges to not be able to prune or do backups, just restores).

 

[NAB]

Hi,

Thank you for the detailed reply. I will follow your advice for the majority of VMs as, you're right, it makes more sense to do it this way.

However....

There are still two VMs I need to back up to a different PBS and Proxmox simply won't let me add a second PBS.

I can add the first, no problem. When I try to add a second, I get an error:

create storage failed: pbs2: error fetching datastores - fingerprint 'CB:8C:E9:11:46:B9:8B:4B:85:5E:xxxxxxxx' not verified, abort! (500)

The problem is the fingerprint in the error message is the fingerprint of the existing PBS and not the one I just tried to add.

Is there a special way I should add a second PBS?

Cheers,
Nicholas.

 

[Dunuin]

create storage failed: pbs2: error fetching datastores - fingerprint 'CB:8C:E9:11:46:B9:8B:4B:85:5E:xxxxxxxx' not verified, abort! (500)

Is there any proxy in between? You usually only work with fingerprints in case of self-signed certificates because when using a proper SSL certificate the fingerprint will change every several months or once a year when the certificate will have to be renewed and then the PBS Storage will stop working.

In case the error message shows a fingerprint of another PBS and not the one you entered when adding the storage there might be some bug and you might want to add a bugreport in the bug tracker in case no staff member here can explain this.

 

[NAB]

The one with the fingerprint does have a self-signed cert. The new one I'm trying to add has a LE cert, but I get exactly the same error if I try to add it without a fingerprint or with one.

Anyway, now that I know I should be able to do it, it's clearly a bug. I'll document it properly and then report it.