Pbs migration

O

olivierw68

New Member
Jun 8, 2025
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Hi,

I have actually a pbs server which is off-site. Performance is not great because it is remote. I'm setting up another one in the data center where my proxmox servers are hosted. The final goal is to use this pbs for backup with a sync on the remote one. I'm looking for a good way to migrate the existing backups. Rsync will take 16 days which is not an option. I'm thinking about migrating VM/ct per VM/ct
Can I use remote sync to synchronize the backup from one VM/ct to the new server and then invert the sync direction and configure proxmox to backup this specific VM to the new server.
And the process with the next VM?
That way I progressively resolve my backup performance problems (which impacts the cluster during backups) without wayiting 16 days

Thanks in advance
 
olivierw68 said:
Hi,

I have actually a pbs server which is off-site. Performance is not great because it is remote. I'm setting up another one in the data center where my proxmox servers are hosted. The final goal is to use this pbs for backup with a sync on the remote one. I'm looking for a good way to migrate the existing backups. Rsync will take 16 days which is not an option. I'm thinking about migrating VM/ct per VM/ct
Can I use remote sync to synchronize the backup from one VM/ct to the new server and then invert the sync direction and configure proxmox to backup this specific VM to the new server.
And the process with the next VM?
That way I progressively resolve my backup performance problems (which impacts the cluster during backups) without wayiting 16 days

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
If you need to transfer a certain amount of data over a narrow connection, you'll need patience. Or you can copy it to a medium and send it by mail. But why? Collect backups on the new PBS by adjusting the destination until it meets your storage needs. Simply change the destination to the new server in the data center. Once that's done, simply wipe the old one and configure it as a pull server for the data center PBS.
 
The problem is, he needs the inital backup, and that takes time. after the first run, only difference is transfered, which is only a very small amount of data.
 
Supaman said:
The problem is, he needs the inital backup, and that takes time. after the first run, only difference is transfered, which is only a very small amount of data.
Click to expand...
That's clear. Now he's experiencing what happens when he needs a restore. It's inevitable, and everyone should be aware of that. What good is a backup if I have to wait 14 days for it to be restored?
 
I wanted to keep the history thats why I add the idea to do it VM by VM:
- remote sync one VM backup old->new
- change backup from this VM to target new pbs
- change sync direction for that VM

Then process the next VM

Is that possible?
 
olivierw68 said:
I wanted to keep the history thats why I add the idea to do it VM by VM:
- remote sync one VM backup old->new
- change backup from this VM to target new pbs
- change sync direction for that VM

Then process the next VM

Is that possible?
Click to expand...
I don't know how to do this without a lot of effort. There's no integrate feature that allows you to selectively migrate individual backup sets from PBS-A to PBS-B to potentially save bandwidth.
 
olivierw68 said:
I was thinking to use group filters:
proxmox-backup-manager sync-job update ID --group-filter group:vm/100
Click to expand...
I think you're going off the rails. How about an rsync job that you can interrupt and restart at will until it eventually reports completion?
That takes time, of course, but it's manageable.
 
This seems much too complicated. Perhaps all this copy back and forth is not needed?

Set up new onsite PBS. Start a fresh new backup run. Locally.
(Would have been best to do this from the start.)

Once you have backups locally, go to the far PBS and setup a Remote connection back to the local PBS.

Once you have a Remote setup at the far location, configure a Sync Job there to Pull the new data to the far site.
Make sure you dump the new data in the same Namespace as the old data at the far site.

PBS is kinda dumb about VMIDs. You won't have 2 different sets of backups.
Instead, its just gonna dump the new backups in with the old backups, seemingly without really checking anything.
I'm not sure if it's going to treat the first Sync as a full or incremental, but the way PBS works, its gonna call it an incremental anyway. It will dedupe and copy the bare minimum amount of data that it can.

End result:
- New local PBS has new backups, which Sync to the remote site.
- Old remote PBS has ALL the backups, old and new. These could be synced back if necessary, but this is your offsite archive.
 
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