[SOLVED] NAS nfs as datastore for backups

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lordhanuman

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Jan 2, 2010
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hello to all.
I'm using a nas as an external PBS datastore via NFS.
In the event of a disaster how should I proceed? or better, if my PBS machine is damaged, can I connect the NAS as a datastore to a new PBS machine and recover the backups? Or is it wrong? Or do I have to backup something from the PBS machine to be able to recover the NAS later?
Thank you
 
you need to manually recreate the datastore definition (the entry in /etc/proxmox-backup/datastore.cfg) and any jobs/options defined for the datastore. the backups themselves including their metadata are all stored on the datastore.
 
what's your backup volume?

is this for home use or for business ?

Performance should suck with such setup, even ordinary local disks often cannot meet the demand. in pbs manual, local attached ssd is recommended. so don't expect too much when using nfs remotely.

test thoroughly, besides backup speed also runtime of gc/prun/verify
 
I would recommend to also backup your PBS VM/LXC via VZDump to the same NAS using another NFS/SMB share. And don't forget to backup your PVE config files in "/etc/pve" (not needed for PBS, but if you don't want to be screwed when your PVE system disk dies, as stuff like security groups used by your guests aren't part of the guest backups, then it would be good to have that too).
 
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with backup of /etc/proxmox-backup from pbs, it should be not too hard to freshly setup a new backup server and attach the datastores.

i migrated a pbs via transfer of this etc dir. iirc, that was totally straightforward

can somebody confirm ?
 
Yes, moved my old PBS VM on TrueNAS to a new PBS LXC on PVE and reused the datastore provided by NFS.

You don't really need all those PBS config files, but would be very annoying to add all the users, tokens, targets, privileges, verify/sync/GC/prune tasks, NFS/SMB shares, ... again from scratch. Way faster to reuse some of the old config files.
 
RolandK said:
what's your backup volume?

is this for home use or for business ?

Performance should suck with such setup, even ordinary local disks often cannot meet the demand. in pbs manual, local attached ssd is recommended. so don't expect too much when using nfs remotely.

test thoroughly, besides backup speed also runtime of gc/prun/verify
Click to expand...
They are very small VPs, I have a dedicated network and ssds on the nas to act as a cache
 
fabian said:
you need to manually recreate the datastore definition (the entry in /etc/proxmox-backup/datastore.cfg) and any jobs/options defined for the datastore. the backups themselves including their metadata are all stored on the datastore.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the answer. So by backing up the pbs configuration files and doing the restore, can I access all the backup files even if they are on a nas?
 
if your datastore is not on the root disk, you need to do the following after installing PBS:
- mount the datastore
- create an entry in /etc/proxmox-backup/datastore.cfg pointing at the mountpoint
- recreate jobs/other settings

the backup data itself is self-contained within the datastore. you can also restore datastore.cfg (and other config files in /etc/proxmox-backup) if you have a backup copy, provided the mountpoint on the new system is identical to that on the old system.
 
If, on the other hand, the backups are encrypted, do I have to do some particular operation to make them recognize them, when I go to recreate the pbs machine?
 
no, the encryption doesn't matter. you *do* need the key(s) used to encrypt the backups if you want to restore them with a client, but those are not stored on the PBS server, but on the client side (and hopefully somewhere else, like in a safe, or your password manager, or ..). you can attach them (encrypted with a public "master" key) to each backup snapshot, but in that case as well, you need the private master key to restore them (which should also be kept stored somewhere safe, and not just on the system that is doing the backup!).

see the encryption documentation for details:
https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/backup-client.html#encryption
 
yeah that's clear :)
thanks for everything

fabian said:
no, the encryption doesn't matter. you *do* need the key(s) used to encrypt the backups if you want to restore them with a client, but those are not stored on the PBS server, but on the client side (and hopefully somewhere else, like in a safe, or your password manager, or ..). you can attach them (encrypted with a public "master" key) to each backup snapshot, but in that case as well, you need the private master key to restore them (which should also be kept stored somewhere safe, and not just on the system that is doing the backup!).

see the encryption documentation for details:
https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/backup-client.html#encryption
Click to expand...
 
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