Proxmox backup server as vm

[pindaroli]

In my homelab i am going to build all in one node: proxmox, truenas on vm, and kubernetes cluster of 3 vm.

As any sense to installe proxmox backup server as vm inside proxmox (using true nas share)?
In a
I alternative do you have other backup strategy to suggest me?

Thanks

 

[VictorSTS]

Bad idea.

If you do it as planned, your backups will depend on the TrueNAS VM and you won't be able to backup the TrueNAS VM to PBS safely. Also the backups of the TrueNAS VM to PBS will include PBS backups themselves... Not to mention how do you plan to recover from a server failure, as your TrueNAS VM with your backups won't be available.

Use a usb drive with two partitions, one big, one small Pass through the big one to the PBS VM and use it as datastore to backup your VMs. Setup the small partition as PVE storage to make vzdump backups of the PBS VM itself. This way if you server breaks, simply reinstall/get another server, plug the USB drive and restore the vzdump of your PBS VM, then restore your VMs.

IMHO, using TrueNAS in a VM is pointless, as PVE is able to manage storage on it's own. I prefer using something like OMV.

 

[pindaroli]

BAbituato ad idea.

If you do it as planned, your backups will depend on the TrueNAS VM and you won't be able to backup the TrueNAS VM to PBS safely. Also the backups of the TrueNAS VM to PBS will include PBS backups themselves... Not to mention how do you plan to recover from a server failure, as your TrueNAS VM with your backups won't be available.

Use a usb drive with two partitions, one big, one small Pass through the big one to the PBS VM and use it as datastore to backup your VMs. Setup the small partition as PVE storage to make vzdump backups of the PBS VM itself. This way if you server breaks, simply reinstall/get another server, plug the USB drive and restore the vzdump of your PBS VM, then restore your VMs.

IMHO, using TrueNAS in a VM is pointless, as PVE is able to manage storage on it's own. I prefer using something like OMV.

Interesting the idea of using promox nas, but is it easy to configure? I am accustomed to use truenas and is straight.

 

[VictorSTS]

Just try Openmediavault in a test VM. Isn't the prettiest web UI, but gets the job done quite easily.

 

[gfngfn256]

One thing I'd add to VictorSTS's idea; make a dd zipped image of the PVE OS boot drive & save it to that external USB (smaller) partition, & that way you can always restore the PVE server to that saved state.

 

[pindaroli]

Just try Openmediavault in a test VM. Isn't the prettiest web UI, but gets the job done quite easily.

But why not truenas? if pretty and easy too

 

[Dunuin]

But why not truenas? if pretty and easy too

TrueNAS in a VM works fine. But you probably want a dedicated HBA card and disks for TrueNAS for PCI passthrough so TrueNAS is able to directly access the real physical drives. TrueNAS uses ZFS and ZFS is quite demanding (lots of RAM, ECC RAM, Enterprise SSDs with PLP, CMR HDDs, lots of CPU power, ... I for example gave my TrueNAS VMs 12GB RAM + 3 vCPUs, 24GB RAM + 7 vCPUs, 32GB RAM + 8 vCPUs). An OMV VM with mdadm raid and ext4/xfs is way more lightweight and less demanding.

 

[pindaroli]

TrueNAS in a VM works fine. But you probably want a dedicated HBA card and disks for TrueNAS for PCI passthrough so TrueNAS is able to directly access the real physical drives. TrueNAS uses ZFS and ZFS is quite demanding (lots of RAM, ECC RAM, Enterprise SSDs with PLP, CMR HDDs, lots of CPU power, ... I for example gave my TrueNAS VMs 12GB RAM + 3 vCPUs, 24GB RAM + 7 vCPUs, 32GB RAM + 8 vCPUs). An OMV VM with mdadm raid and ext4/xfs is way more lightweight and less demanding.

I am already usinf truenas bare metal with n100 and 32g and dedicated hba, 4x14tb raidz2. I am upgrading to 7840hs 64g and proxmox. 32g and controler will be used for truenas I think it will run like a charm.

 

[Dunuin]

One problem is TrueNAS support. If you got a problem and ask in the TrueNAS forums they will roll their eyes and tell you that TrueNAS should be run bare metal and that the only supported hypervisor is ESXi.
I personally got some problems in the past with shutting down the VM where it gets stuck and will get killed after 5 minutes which isn't great if the UPS doesn't got capacity for 5 or more minutes. Another problem is that TrueNAS Scale isn't mature and TrueNAS Core isn't supporting the fsfreeze, so snapshot-mode backups won't be consistent.

 

[pindaroli]

One problem is TrueNAS support. If you got a problem and ask in the TrueNAS forums they will roll their eyes and tell you that TrueNAS should be run bare metal and that the only supported hypervisor is ESXi.
I personally got some problems in the past with shutting down the VM where it gets stuck and will get killed after 5 minutes which isn't great if the UPS doesn't got capacity for 5 or more minutes. Another problem is that TrueNAS Scale isn't mature and TrueNAS Core isn't supporting the fsfreeze, so snapshot-mode backups won't be consistent.

Probably you are talking of enterprise version, I use consumer version that is without full test guarantee so I am accustomed to this. In any case on forum there is docs that explain well how to install it on proxmox. I will try and I will report my experience

 

[VictorSTS]

I am already usinf truenas bare metal with n100 and 32g and dedicated hba, 4x14tb raidz2. I am upgrading to 7840hs 64g and proxmox. 32g and controler will be used for truenas I think it will run like a charm.

Your virtual TrueNAS depends on that hardware: if it breaks, your TrueNAS will be down. You may be able to do full backups of the VM, but you won't be able to restore then unless using the same/similar hardware. If you use other NAS solutions that do not depend on specific hardware passthrough, you'll get more backup/restore/disaster recovery options. IMHO TrueNAS is good, just doesn't fit nicely as a VM and I prefer other options.

 

[toomanylogins]

In my homelab i am going to build all in one node: proxmox, truenas on vm, and kubernetes cluster of 3 vm.

As any sense to installe proxmox backup server as vm inside proxmox (using true nas share)?
In a
I alternative do you have other backup strategy to suggest me?

Thanks

Buy a cheap secondhand pc from ebay/faceache and put pbs on that with a couple of hard disks. Set it up to start run for an hour then shutdown and schedule backups to alternate drives each day. If you are paranoid buy 2.

 

[pindaroli]

Buy a cheap secondhand pc from ebay/faceache and put pbs on that with a couple of hard disks. Set it up to start run for an hour then shutdown and schedule backups to alternate drives each day. If you are paranoid buy 2.

I have rog ally with 4t nvme, i can use it

 

[Kingneutron]

One thing I'd add to VictorSTS's idea; make a dd zipped image of the PVE OS boot drive & save it to that external USB (smaller) partition, & that way you can always restore the PVE server to that saved state.

In my experience, you are better off with fsarchiver for bare-metal ext4 / xfs backup+restore, and I have scripts for that. It's multi-threaded, provides compression, and I've been using it for years without issues. fsarchiver can also restore to smaller-size disk, and will convert ext4 to xfs (and the reverse) on the fly if needed. It also restores the partition UUID

https://github.com/kneutron/ansitest/tree/master/proxmox

Another alternative is veeam for linux, but the build is currently broken for PVE kernel 6.8.12-1