Noob backup strategy

[Filikun]

TL;DR Is copying the datastore (the files) of PBS to a remote destination a sufficient backup solution? Can I use them files to recreate my VM on a new system if the old fails? How can approach automatically running a rclone command when a backup is done without knowing anything about scripting in Linux or what hook script is.

Hi there, I've been trying to learn Proxmox and the world of Linux for about a year now and have an old Intel nuc as my Proxmox machine mainly using it for a Home Assistant OS VM and a Ubuntu server VM with some docker containers. For the first time I feel I need to start looking at backup soluations as I've just started up with a self hosted Bookstack.

So here is what I've done. I run PBS on the host and does backups to USB-HDD that is connected to the nuc. I've also installed and configured Rclone to sync my USB-HDD with my OneDrive account. So on OneDrive I now have .cunk dir, vm, dir, .gc-status file, .lock file. Is this enough as a remote backup? Can I somehow use these files to recreate my VM and their files on a new Proxmox server if mine where to go down? My rclone command looking like this

rclone sync /mnt/datastore/usb-backup/ onedrive:PBS --progress --progress-terminal-title

I guess as I do a sync and not a copy that when Proxmox Backup Server starts to prune, my OneDrive will also prune them backups that are overdue?

If that is sufficient how can I automate that command to run when a Proxmox backup is done? I've seen a lot of talk about crontab and hook scripts but to be honest I have no clue either where to put a script nor what to type in it.

Thanks in advance, I know this questions is on an absolute noob level and that many of you think this is basic knowledge but I really want to learn this and having searched around now for some time I haven't really found anything that I could understand.

 

[aaron]

Can I use them files to recreate my VM on a new system if the old fails?

You will need a PBS server to restore a VM.

If you try to sync the datastore to another storage, make sure that hidden files and directories are included!

In a disaster case, you could install a fresh PBS, sync back the data and the /etc/proxmox-backup/datastore.cfg file. As right now, the tooling itself does not allow to import an existing datastore.

You could also setup a second PBS and use the built in sync feature to sync the datastore.

 

[Filikun]

You will need a PBS server to restore a VM.

If you try to sync the datastore to another storage, make sure that hidden files and directories are included!

In a disaster case, you could install a fresh PBS, sync back the data and the /etc/proxmox-backup/datastore.cfg file. As right now, the tooling itself does not allow to import an existing datastore.

You could also setup a second PBS and use the built in sync feature to sync the datastore.

Thanks a lot for taking your time and clearing this up for me. I think I'll actually remove PBS and just use the ordinary backup functionality to my USB-drive and then sync that to the cloud instead. I found this and will try that out. The output of that script on the cloud drive looks much like it does on the Proxmox server host, it's just a .zst per VM backup.

PBS looks amazing though but I'll move to that when I can use it on a dedicated machine rather than on the Proxmox server host (as intended).