PBS vs BorgBackup for 4TB of NAS files?

fuzzyduck

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Jul 14, 2021
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Hey all,

Im using PBS for VM and LXC backup like we all do, but its also possible to backup regular files.
Ive been reading a bit about backups and ended up with Borg to do my backups. In progress of redoing all previouly scripted rsync backup strategies.

Now comparing PBS to Borg, they both do things `the same` im interested in.
-Dedup (using chunks), with prunable history
-compress (PBS on ZFS compression on)

PBS has a clickable GUI where i can download a single file from a snapshot, whereas with Borg i need to find a snapshot and cli-mount it, hopeing its in this particular snapshot.

To declutter even more im keen on learning why i should or should not use PBS to do the file backup of 3 to 4 TB of random files?
-Speed?
-Network usage of incremental backups after initial full backup?
-CPU cycles?
-Excessive HDD IO on client or PBS each incremental round?
-Chunk size?

Enlighten me ;) thx!
 
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Biggest problem for me is that Proxmox only offers a backup client for Debian.
With Windows or Mac you are out of luck and it is not planned to add them in the foreseeable future. Other Debian based Linux distros might work or not.
With non-Debian based Linuxes you are out of luck again.

So great for backing up guests but for everything else, except for Debian hosts, I wouldn't rely on it and use something that officially supports all those OSs.
 
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I've come to understand that PBS does dynamic chunksize for files. But that's only to max 4 mb. So for huuuge files it will be chopped up in loads of chunks, scattered all over the place increasing hd IO?
 
I've come to understand that PBS does dynamic chunksize for files. But that's only to max 4 mb. So for huuuge files it will be chopped up in loads of chunks, scattered all over the place increasing hd IO?
Yes, that is how PBS works. Millions over millions of max 4MB chunk files that then get deduplicated so none of these is stored twice. This heavy IO requirement is one point why it's highly recommended to use local SSDs instead of HDDs or a NAS or even worse a cloud storage for the datastore.
 
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