PBS Restore options

[martin.kenney]

Hi All

I am trying to find out if it is possible to do a live restore while changing the network and make edits to the config while it is restoring. There are times when I need to do a restore of a VM for testing purposes while the orig VM is still running. The disks on the VM are large and a full restore would take hours. Process I would like to do is

Live restore to a new VM / VMID new MAC, new network or network disconnected.
Access the VM and login via console making changes to network in the OS and reboot
Edit the VM configuration and either connect the network (if disconnected) or change the network from one network to another.

Thank You

 

[Chris]

Hi All

I am trying to find out if it is possible to do a live restore while changing the network and make edits to the config while it is restoring. There are times when I need to do a restore of a VM for testing purposes while the orig VM is still running. The disks on the VM are large and a full restore would take hours. Process I would like to do is

Live restore to a new VM / VMID new MAC, new network or network disconnected.
Access the VM and login via console making changes to network in the OS and reboot
Edit the VM configuration and either connect the network (if disconnected) or change the network from one network to another.

Thank You

Hi,
no that is not possible. Only a subset of the configuration can be overwritten from the restore window. Maybe you could restore the VMs to a test node/cluster with restrictive firewall rules in place so you can exclude the restoring VM interfering with the pre-existing one?

 

[martin.kenney]

Hi Chris,

Is what I am asking to do something that is possibly in development? If it is not is there a way to request / suggest features in Proxmox Backup? We are currently migrating all of our workloads from a ( ESXi vSAN / Veeam ) environment and have / had the capability with Veeam to do instant restores and then make changes on the VM in ESXi like I am asking which is very useful. I can understand locking and preventing changes to disks while doing a restore but changes to network I would think should be possible, as well as the ability to reboot.

We currently do not have a test node or cluster setup in parity to our production cluster.

Thank You

 

[waltar]

Why not create just new vm, take a kind of snapshot (last or create new from now) of your running vm, mount the image, make your changes to hostname etc, umount and then start the new vm too ? Large vm's from pbs take hours as you said while this would run as script in seconds.

 

[martin.kenney]

Hi Walter

Currently we are doing backups daily not taking and storing snapshots as a backup strategy. Is that something you do? Do you have documentation on how you have something like that setup and functional?

Thank You

 

[waltar]

Snapshots are, I will say, a type of local restore-system cache ... as if you want somethink back you take that first but when all local is "gone" because maybe your raidset died then get all back from your backup server which takes just more time.
The described actions we did once manually for a vm and a lxc and write down, just the few lines script around for vmid and hostname as options around is missing. Btw. we use nas for all vm/lxc images while having qcow2 and raw images.
Edit: Take 3rd option for the node to start ...

 

[martin.kenney]

Hi Walter

I might not be understanding you correctly or understanding the way you are using snapshots. I dont think using snapshots as a backup strategy over multiple days and multiple copies would work for us. We have over 200 VMs some of which have multi TB disks, largest being 30TB+. Also the data churn day to day would consume huge amounts of disk and severely impact performance as the number of snapshots taken increase and the length of time the snapshot is stored also increases. I can see your suggestion working if I wanted a copy of a VM "now" but not if I needed to get a cop of one a week ago or a month ago as it would require taking and keeping snapshots for over a week or month.

Please correct me if my understanding of what you suggested is incorrect.

Thank You

 

[Chris]

Is what I am asking to do something that is possibly in development?

No, I'm not aware of such a development. You can however already interact with the VM during restore, so adapting the network configuration from within the VM itself should be possible. I was referring to the overwriting of the Proxmox VE network config for the VM, which is locked during a restore.

If it is not is there a way to request / suggest features in Proxmox Backup?

This would be a feature request for Proxmox VE. Feature requests can be submitted to https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/

Allowing to change the network config for restores has however already been requested and is tracked in this issue https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=3564
Please add your comments there instead of opening an new request, thanks!

 

[waltar]

Please correct me if my understanding of what you suggested is incorrect.

Hello Martin, it's ok, there's no misunderstanding. I just would say that more disk space for local snapshots is maybe lot of cheaper than all the wait times of a restore for different vm restores of you and your colleagues this happen each year.