[SOLVED] Proxmox 7.3 with ZFS also as backup location

[NathanD]

Hi,

I've local NVME disks where Proxmox lives and have 2x 6TB as ZFS mirror. On ZFS I also want to store more than only VM's and containers, for example dumps or backups.

I found 2 threads:

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/can-we-use-zfs-storage-as-backup-storage.100631/
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/directories-under-zfs-pool.91796/

but can`t get it working.

zfs list shows the VM disks and these 2 datasets, where hdd_storage is created in the Proxmox GUI and hdd_storage/backup with zfs create on the commandline.
hdd_storage 46.4G 5.28T 96K /hdd_storage
hdd_storage/backup 96K 5.28T 96K /backup

On hdd_storage/backup I want to have the backups and dumps of VM's and found in the threads you need to do this and then add / check the /etc/pve/storage.cfg:

pvesm set STORAGE_NAME -is_mountpoint yes
I used as STORAGE_NAME different options: hdd_storage/backup, hdd_storage:backup, /backup and so on, but everything ended with a notice of illegal characters or update storage failed: xxxx does not exist.

How to get this working?

 

[Stoiko Ivanov]

* You need to add a 'Directory' type storage (you can use the GUI for that or the appropriate `pvesm add` invocation - see `man pvesm`) pointing to the mountpoint of your backup directory - as far as I can see '/backup'
* on that Directory storage you need to enable 'backup' as content type)

That should be all.

If I misread your question please provide:
* `zfs list`
* `cat /etc/pve/storage.cfg`
* any concrete errors you run into
output in code tags as this should make things clearer for me

I hope this helps!

 

[NathanD]

The problem is that when I use the GUI, it doesn`t let me create it, because there are no disks unused. For directories I think it is a strange message. I added all the requested info with also at last the pveversion.

root@server1:~# zfs list
NAME                        USED  AVAIL     REFER  MOUNTPOINT
hdd_storage                46.4G  5.28T       96K  /hdd_storage
hdd_storage/backup           96K  5.28T       96K  /backup
hdd_storage/vm-101-disk-0  15.5G  5.29T     3.53G  -
hdd_storage/vm-102-disk-0  15.5G  5.29T     3.21G  -
hdd_storage/vm-103-disk-0  15.5G  5.29T     3.79G  -

root@server1:~# cat /etc/pve/storage.cfg
dir: local
    path /var/lib/vz
    content backup,images,iso,snippets,vztmpl,rootdir
    prune-backups keep-all=1

zfspool: hdd_storage
    pool hdd_storage
    content images,rootdir
    mountpoint /hdd_storage
    nodes server1

Some of the tries and errors:

root@server1:~# pvesm set backup -is_mountpoint yes
update storage failed: storage 'backup' does not exist

root@server1:~# pvesm set hdd_storage/backup -is_mountpoint yes
400 Parameter verification failed.
storage: invalid format - storage ID 'hdd_storage/backup' contains illegal characters

pvesm set <storage> [OPTIONS]


root@server1:~# pvesm set /backup -is_mountpoint yes
400 Parameter verification failed.
storage: invalid format - storage ID '/backup' contains illegal characters

pvesm set <storage> [OPTIONS]

root@server1:~# pveversion
pve-manager/7.3-4/d69b70d4 (running kernel: 5.15.83-1-pve)

 

[Stoiko Ivanov]

The problem is that when I use the GUI, it doesn`t let me create it,

You need to go to GUI->Datacenter->Storage - not GUI->Datacenter->node->Disks

I get that this is confusing at first - but the Disks panel is for automatically creating the needed filesystems on you physical disks, the Storage panel is for configuring existing "storages" for use within PVE - and since the storage-view is clusterwide it's under the Datacenter not under the individual node

I hope this explains it!

 

[NathanD]

Your explanation makes it logical, but without it, it was confusing.
And now I know that my software raid1 was also good for that 2 disks, when I used the Datacenter part instead of server.
Thank you for your help!