PBS vs. Veeam CE - especially for databases

[Hunduster]

Hello everyone,

I just joined PVE this week and come from the VMware world. I am currently migrating my Homelab to PVE to test the whole thing for possible corporate use.
I have to say: so far everything is running like clockwork!

I'm currently looking into backups and currently have the PBS and a Veeam CE instance running side by side.
I haven't noticed any major differences in performance: both are pretty much equally fast. To be honest, I can't see any advantage of Veeam at the moment.

As I currently still have some mySQL and InfluxDBs running as Docker, which are soon to be migrated to PVE, I'm wondering which backup variant is better for me.

Long story short: my question to you would be whether the PBS can back up databases so that the DB is consistent. The Qemu-Agent ist installed in all of my VMs andalso activated. A friend of mine said that the PBS has still to shut down the VM before the backup. I had read on the net that the Qemu agent would freeze the DB instance during the backup.

 

[Johannes S]

Hello,
for the databses I would create a custom backup e.G. with mysqldump/pg_dump or influx command line tool and afterwards saving the dump to a backup media with the proxmox-backup-client (for PBS) or a custom tool (like restic). Of course you could also use veeam for it if it supports the specific application.
PBS is mostly (and can't be beat for this imho) for VM and container backups. For application specific backups where consistency might be important (like databases) you should use a specific tool, made for this purpose.

Hope that helps and best regards, Johannes.

 

[f.sennj]

i can say the same, i use PBS for all VMs and CTs, but for application backup like DC and (in my case MS) SQL DB Backup i use Veeam. i guess you could license it with VUL then cost stays low also. not sure if the CE version comes with the application awareness..

 

[Hunduster]

Hello everyone,

Thank you very much for your answers.

Veeam does not seem to be able to do Quest Processing under PVE, at least the point is not available here, but it is in my Enterprise version at work with VSphere. According to Veeam, the CE should have a full feature set and only be limited to 10 workloads. I therefore assume that the issue is the interface to PVE.

I will then continue to use my AutoMySQLBackup script.

One more question: wouldn't it also be consistent to stop the database VM during backup?

 

[f.sennj]

if you talk about the new proxmox plugin for veeam to backup trough the PVE then right, it doesnt support yet SQL backup. so i just set up Veeam inside the SQL Server (as it would be a physical machine via agent) and then backup. then all the SQL intergrations (like logshipping to veeam) is there..

i think we need to wait until veeam goes further in development with proxmox integration, as of now i dont see any advantage to PBS apart from file level restore directly to the OS.

well and a big feature to replicate backups from veeam to S3 which is still missing PBS

 

[Hunduster]

so i just set up Veeam inside the SQL Server (as it would be a physical machine via agent) and then backup. then all the SQL intergrations (like logshipping to veeam) is there..

I didn't even think of that idea. Just tested this is a great way!

 

[f.sennj]

but i must say that i also tried PBS backup with SQL and the restores went fine - you need to properly config dcom settings so the network service can read and use VSS - but still veeam with a 5min. Log shipping granularity is king - no question about that..

JUst be careful for MS SQL that your veeam instance also runs with MS sql - makes things easier then with postgres..

 

[_gabriel]

you need to properly config dcom settings so the network service can read and use VSS

Can you tell us more why ?

 

[f.sennj]

windwos - execute / ausführen
dcomcnfg
then click on computer


and then put the setting like this in standarg bearbeiten for zugriffsberechtigungen.

 

[f.sennj]

then no VSS failures should be visible in eventviewer, sorry i cant find that old log post here where i learned about it.

 

[_gabriel]

then no VSS failures should be visible in eventviewer

indeed , good reminder, I already had the dcomcnfg.exe tip written down but was forgotten because it's only cosmetic.
(https://help.remote-backup.com/inde...7/5/eliminating-vss-error-8194-from-event-log )

Another tip, for MS SQL , is VssOption setting available from last version of Qemu Guest Agent
( https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/latest-qemu-ga/qemu-ga-x86_64.msi )
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\QEMU Guest Agent VSS Provider" /v VssOption /t REG_DWORD /d 5 /f
set to 5 ( = VSS_BT_COPY ) to prevent break diff SQL backup chain of within guest backup tools.

 

[Hunduster]

My Homelab setup is currently about a MariaDB in which there are some data records and which I have been maintaining for years.

Previously, this was in a Docker container on a QNAP NAS. Now I have moved the database to an Ubuntu system.

So far, I have always backed up the databases using the AutoMySQLBackup script. Now I (additionally) back up with the PBS on a snapshot basis. However, the VM is NOT stopped for this. Therefore, my question was specifically related to MariaDB and not Microsoft SQL. If I were ever embarrassed to restore a backup of the MariaDB(VM) and my database was inconsistent due to the snapshot method, this would be a disaster for me.

 

[Johannes S]

If you care about database consistency PBS snapshots won't cut it since PBS (different to Veeam) doesn't support application aware backups. UsingAutoMySQLBackup to create dumps and afterwards using PBS or another backuptools to store the dumps offsite, would be the way I would approach this.