PBS on unprivileged LXC container can see all host disks?!

torwag

Member
Oct 5, 2020
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Hi,
maybe a misunderstanding on my side.

Current situation:
One Proxmox node on an HP Proliant microserver runs several LXC and VMs, including some docker stuff (just moving into LXC containers from the supervisor). Now I got by chance two more HP Proliant microserver, one at the same location, one at another location

What I want to do:
Creating a proxmox cluster of three nodes
I plane to install pbs in an LXC container to enable backups, esp. on the remote location.
To be able to back up each node on the other machines. Doing this within Proxmox as a container, I hope to be maximal flexible, moving backup possibilities around as time and needs pass.

What I did:
Installed PBS in an unprivileged LXC-container on one node to test (never used PBS before). My simple idea, I test it and as soon as the cluster is working I can move the container to one of the other nodes.

What puzzles me:
I started PBS all seems to work, however, on the disk view (webuI) I see all disks of the Proxmox server. This puzzles me. I thought I can only see the virtual disks created for the LXC container. Even worse, all disks are marked unused, whereas they are part of LVMs and ZFS on the Proxmox server.
I feel I do something wrong and being able to remove, delete and reuse disks on the PBS (LXC container)-Server, which are actually used on the Proxmox server seems to be very dangerous.
Maybe I have a problem with my understanding of LXC, maybe I did something wrong. Maybe my construct (see above) is doomed and I should do it differently.

Any helps and thoughts are welcome
 
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Before you keep planning on that cluster, check the latency between your two remote CPDs:

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Cluster_Manager#_cluster_network
Ohhhh...
Thanks, indeed I was not aware of this requirement.
Actually I planed to use one node at my work location andtwo at home connecting all via a dedicated WireGuard network. But that requirement most likely rules out that idea.
My hope was being able to transfer services where they are mostly needed and enabling some sort of redundancy in case one locations drops dead.

Any idea about the LXC PBS? If I can't cluster the remote nodes, could I at least create backups for each other at the remote location?
 
If I can't cluster the remote nodes, could I at least create backups for each other at the remote location?
You can run two PBS and set up a sync job, so the offsite PBS pulls the backups from the local PBS over that wireguard tunnel.

Your local PVEs then could do a fast restore from the local PBS or a slower (because you probably don't got a gbit internet connection?) restore from the offsite PBS.
 
Last edited:
You can run two PBS and set up a sync job, so the offsite PBS pulls the backups from the local PBS over that wireguard tunnel.

Your local PVEs then could do a fast restore from the local PBS or a slower (because you probably don't got a gbit internet connection?) restore from the offsite PBS.
OK, that was something I considered already. I am lucky, and I have indeed a 1Gbit connection at home. But for me the backup location is basically key. I want to have a recent backup at a different location to be safe. If the "shit hits the fan" at home, I guess I have first a lot of other things to do and driving to work and haul the other box home, to restore the backup is a very likely option. Thus, the backups should operate automatically, but to speed up the restore there would be an option to haul stuff around.

What still puzzles me is the fact that the PBS on the unprivileged LXC container can see all native hard drives of the supervisor. Is that a feature, a bug or a misunderstanding of container technology on my side?
 

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