Hi all!
What pretentious title for this post !
Sorry for that but I want to sahre the frustration that I had (or maybe my completly false misunderstanding) for that proxmox backup client tool.
First, let me say that I really like PBS as a central backup solution, it'S getting better and better.
But the client part... it's becoming to be a nightmare to maintain a good and simple backup policy for the client.
First, the lack of a windows client. I know that there are some non official port but... with the great success of PVE and PBS, an official windows client could ease the backup strategy for a lot of Proxmox Administrator. A lot of companies a reluctant to use non official tool because of lacking security control so even if your ecosystem is 90% of linux, thw 10% remaining for Windows hosts can be complicated to deal with if you still want to have 1 backup solution with PBS.
Now, the backup configuration with the client..
I am not sure that I understand the design on how to manage inclusions and exlusions of files and folders....Most of the backup solution use a pretty simple schema as a configuration files of a policy applied to a client: this is what to backup, this is what not to backup, most of the time as a form a list of folders/files with wildcards.
But not in the client. I mean You can still do some exclusions but... very hard to maintain:
- You can use the command line option only to exclude some fodlers but... you may take the risks, because:
if you try to exclude "/home/this.user /root/cache" that are in / you will have
/home/this.user/** -> /this.user/**
/root/cache/** -> /cache/**
will be applied for home.pxar:/home and root.pxar:/root but also for all invocations (like /cache/** could also be applied to /etc/cache if this one exists)
Of course you can play with exclude files. but the syntax is also tricky because sometimes it's hard to tell what you want instead of what you don't want when it comes to exclude folders inside folders..
Also, if I set some exclude files using a playbook to the specific location I want. Nothing prevent someone to delete, add, move those fiels around which make the exclusion management complex to use..
So, maybe I see that worst that it is, maybe I have not fully read the documentation and you can send my bad words (not too much please!) but..I feel that some improvement could be made on the client part that could make a sysadmin or backup admin job more easy.
I try to use ansible as a way to push some configuration to my servers and the more easy it is the more easy it will be to maintain and control.
Thanks for the reading!
R.
What pretentious title for this post !
Sorry for that but I want to sahre the frustration that I had (or maybe my completly false misunderstanding) for that proxmox backup client tool.First, let me say that I really like PBS as a central backup solution, it'S getting better and better.
But the client part... it's becoming to be a nightmare to maintain a good and simple backup policy for the client.
First, the lack of a windows client. I know that there are some non official port but... with the great success of PVE and PBS, an official windows client could ease the backup strategy for a lot of Proxmox Administrator. A lot of companies a reluctant to use non official tool because of lacking security control so even if your ecosystem is 90% of linux, thw 10% remaining for Windows hosts can be complicated to deal with if you still want to have 1 backup solution with PBS.
Now, the backup configuration with the client..
I am not sure that I understand the design on how to manage inclusions and exlusions of files and folders....Most of the backup solution use a pretty simple schema as a configuration files of a policy applied to a client: this is what to backup, this is what not to backup, most of the time as a form a list of folders/files with wildcards.
But not in the client. I mean You can still do some exclusions but... very hard to maintain:
- You can use the command line option only to exclude some fodlers but... you may take the risks, because:
if you try to exclude "/home/this.user /root/cache" that are in / you will have
/home/this.user/** -> /this.user/**
/root/cache/** -> /cache/**
will be applied for home.pxar:/home and root.pxar:/root but also for all invocations (like /cache/** could also be applied to /etc/cache if this one exists)
Of course you can play with exclude files. but the syntax is also tricky because sometimes it's hard to tell what you want instead of what you don't want when it comes to exclude folders inside folders..
Also, if I set some exclude files using a playbook to the specific location I want. Nothing prevent someone to delete, add, move those fiels around which make the exclusion management complex to use..
So, maybe I see that worst that it is, maybe I have not fully read the documentation and you can send my bad words (not too much please!) but..I feel that some improvement could be made on the client part that could make a sysadmin or backup admin job more easy.
I try to use ansible as a way to push some configuration to my servers and the more easy it is the more easy it will be to maintain and control.
Thanks for the reading!
R.
