PBS configuration for backing up NFS servers

[Adrigrou]

Hello all,

I am currently re-architecturing my backup infrastructure. It consists of backing up multiple NFS servers totaling around 900TB uncompressed.

I currently have 7 backup servers (Dell 730xd/PERC730) with RAID 6 configuration on 12 HDD disks, representing between 100TB and 200TB of storage per server. The specifications include 128GB RAM and 2 Xeon CPUs per server. All the backups are done with rsync scripts and crontab.

I am considering using PBS as a replacement for multiple reasons, including gaining more space with dedup/garbage collection, LTO interfacing for external backup, backup speed, and syncing between sites.
But I am not sure if it will be an adapted solution.

I plan to reuse the same hardware and can easily deploy the Proxmox Backup Client with Puppet or Ansible. However, I am facing multiple problems:

1. I don't want to plug/unplug my sas wire to my LTO ROBOT for each of my seven servers. Can I use a master server to drive my LTO TAPE robot, connected to the other 7 servers? Essentially, accessing the datastore from multiple PBS servers.
2. I am currently using XFS for my RAID 6 volume. I think it would be better for me to migrate to HBA - ZFS with some SSD drives for file metadata and possibly L2ARC.
3. there is more that i don't remember right now ..

At this point, I'm undecided on whether to go with Proxmox Backup Server or update my backup scripts.

if someone could enlighten me on the feasibility and interest of doing this I would be very grateful.
Any suggestion is welcome.

Kind regards.

 

[sb-jw]

I don't want to plug/unplug my sas wire to my LTO ROBOT for each of my seven servers. Can I use a master server to drive my LTO TAPE robot, connected to the other 7 servers? Essentially, accessing the datastore from multiple PBS servers.

Is there really a need for tapes? Maybe you can rethink this a bit and map it completely with PBS?

I am currently using XFS for my RAID 6 volume. I think it would be better for me to migrate to HBA - ZFS with some SSD drives for file metadata and possibly L2ARC.

I think so too.

there is more that i don't remember right now ..

You may no longer need 7 backup servers, as PBS is very good at Dedup and factors of up to 30 are certainly possible.

At this point, I'm undecided on whether to go with Proxmox Backup Server or update my backup scripts.

Can your script encrypt backups? Can this synchronize between multiple servers or entire locations? Does your script handle garbage collection? Can your script verify the backups? Can you do a live restore with your script? Can your script backup incrementally?

I would argue that if you don't currently have Veeam in use, PBS beats your script by far and is much easier to maintain. PBS is free, why don't you install it as a VM and just play around with it?

 

[Adrigrou]

Thanks for the reply @sb-jw.
Yes there is a need for external cold backup every 6 months, if there is not other solutions i will buy a bunch of pcie sas card and do the switch by hand, if really i can lower the number of backup servers to two or tree this will be ok.

Regarding the zfs configuration for pbs i have not found the ideal partition scheme will raidz1 be adapted for that purpose ?

You are absolutly right, i want/need these features, the only feature that i have now are incremental backup , backup between site and the fact that those backup are file can be convenient, as for the stability it is ok, everything is configured true puppet with some monitoring on the backup tasks but i need more granulometry …

What do you think about backing up on hdd disks ?