Noob Looking for some advice on backing up proxmox server

[michaeljkent090]

Hello,

I have had a proxmox server for a bit now and my family and I have begun to rely on it quite a bit. Recently I had a mini pc that completely failed and I lost a bunch of stuff due to not backing up and bad choices.

Now my question for the people on here smarter then I am, what would be best practice for my setup moving forward?

I have ordered two new mini pc's and drives for both. One has a I7 and one has an I5.

In my head I would like the I7 to be my new proxmox server and host everything.

The second mini pc I would like as a backup of some sort.

Now I know proxmox has a backup server of their own, Ive just never used it. Should I run proxmox backup server, or set the second mini pc up as a NAS and mount that share and mirror the drives in that?

Most of my experience has been just using proxmoxs gui and a few of the helper scripts to setup and configure stuff, and setting up basic vms. So im looking for a soloution that will help me guarantee uptime for my family, but also have high ease of use / application. On a very limited budget for this so running out and buying a NAS or youtuber sized rack of appliances is out of the question.

Thank you all for your time and knowledge.

 

[4leftpaws]

You will get a lot more bang for your buck by using PBS (Proxmox Backup Server). Once set up, backups are handled automatically and invisibly. As well as storing multiple points in time through deltas, meaning you get a large amount of deduplication. For example: My 15 VMs each have 20 restore points that go back a year. It takes up 800GB and is deduped by a factor of 52.

Additionally, it's very easy to destroy a PVE, reinstall it, hook up the PBS, and restore all your VMs faster than you would if you had the content mirrored on a NAS.

I would go with the backup server 10 times out of 10.

 

[michaeljkent090]

Perfect thank you for the advice. I greatly appreciate it I find the wealth of information on here very overwhelming....

 

[michaeljkent090]

By chance maybe you could humor me with one more question? The main mini pc is being delivered tomorrow. As of current my plan is to install proxmox on it , add the temporary Pc Ive running for the past 30 days, migrate all my cts and vms and then basically repurpose the temp proxmox server.

Previously i had migrated vms and cts this way but could never remove the old computer from the cluster.

Would this be the best way to go about this and is there even a way to remove a node from a cluster?

The second pc for proxmox backup wont be here till mid next month so i cant utilize that at all.

I tried backing up cts and vms to a usb drive and migrating but got nothing but errors and grey hairs....

 

[4leftpaws]

By chance maybe you could humor me with one more question? The main mini pc is being delivered tomorrow. As of current my plan is to install proxmox on it , add the temporary Pc Ive running for the past 30 days, migrate all my cts and vms and then basically repurpose the temp proxmox server.

Previously i had migrated vms and cts this way but could never remove the old computer from the cluster.

Would this be the best way to go about this and is there even a way to remove a node from a cluster?

The second pc for proxmox backup wont be here till mid next month so i cant utilize that at all.

I tried backing up cts and vms to a usb drive and migrating but got nothing but errors and grey hairs....

This is absolutely possible. Joining a cluster is very straightforward. And the documentation for leaving a cluster is fairly simple when there isn't any shared storage. Migration may take a while depending on the VM size, but it's definitely better than an attempt using USBs.
https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-pvecm.html#pvecm_separate_node_without_reinstall

 

[michaeljkent090]

This is absolutely possible. Joining a cluster is very straightforward. And the documentation for leaving a cluster is fairly simple when there isn't any shared storage. Migration may take a while depending on the VM size, but it's definitely better than an attempt using USBs.
https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-pvecm.html#pvecm_separate_node_without_reinstall

Yes I understood how to do all that.

The issue i ran into was removing the node once i was done.

 

[LnxBil]

The issue i ran into was removing the node once i was done.

Using a cluster for this is the problem itself. A cluster was meant to be a group of at least 3 nodes (including the qdevice) and it'll be not running if you have only one node left. Most people don't understand the implications of this and think that it's just a nice GUI so that you can manage multiple hosts via one interface. It's not. For this, please use the new Proxmox Datacenter Manager.

There are also cloud-based PBS server on which you can backup directly in order to have a cloud backup. Please setup encryption for this in PVE itself in order to have secure backups. There are some free services out there, but also paid ones.