Proxmox Backup server features

[franconovik]

Hello,
I have read about Proxmox Backup server but it is not clear to me some matters.
Lets suppose the following scenario :
- we have a Proxmox server backup should installed on a bare metal with at least 10GB RAM
and 32GB HD .
- we have a proxmox cluster 8.3 containing 4 nodes configured with 2TB of zfs storage on each one,
On each node there are running at least 5 VMs
- we have 2 NAS of 8TB to use as storage for backups

Can I full backup all VMs on all nodes on NAS ?
Can I make incremental backups of all VMs on the 2 NAS ?
Can I organize full and incremental backups so on each nas I have a directory assigned to each node ?

As backup storage can I use google drive and how to configure ?

The same proxmox server backup can be connected to 2 different and separated proxmox clusters ?

As backup storage can I use removable media (usb disk for example ) as disk of backup ?

If I detach this usb disk and attach it to another Proxmox server backup am I able to read the backups and restore them to another cluster ?

Thanks is advance for your help and answers.
/Franco

 

[UdoB]

I am just a user, so no official statement from me. But:

- we have 2 NAS of 8TB to use as storage for backups

As long as I don't know the capabilities of that NAS it is hard to tell if it is usable. How would you connect? NFS?

While this may work it is definitely not recommended:

https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/installation.html#recommended-server-system-requirements

"Prefer fast storage that delivers high IOPS for random IO workloads; use only enterprise SSDs for best results."

And unfortunately: it may work at the beginning and starting to fail (delivering "timeouts") after lots of backups do exist. Search the forum, this has been discussed several times.

Can I full backup all VMs on all nodes on NAS ?
Can I make incremental backups of all VMs on the 2 NAS ?

Yes. Each and every backup is a "full backup" and an "incremental backup" at the same time. This is part of the magic involved

https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/faq.html#is-the-backup-incremental-deduplicated-full

Can I organize full and incremental backups so on each nas I have a directory assigned to each node ?

No. not really. There are "Namespaces" to keep backups from different servers apart.

https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/terminology.html#backup-namespace

As backup storage can I use google drive and how to configure ?

No!

The same proxmox server backup can be connected to 2 different and separated proxmox clusters ?

Yes!

As backup storage can I use removable media (usb disk for example ) as disk of backup ?

One of the newer features is this:

https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/storage.html#removable-datastores

If I detach this usb disk and attach it to another Proxmox server backup am I able to read the backups and restore them to another cluster ?

Yes. After careful configuration this should work.

You see... reading the documentation clears up a lot of questions ;-)

 

[tcabernoch]

The NAS question ... we get this a lot.
Of course you want to put backups on the NAS. That's a very standard thing to want to do.
And PBS doesn't do well with slow storage. Like a NAS.

That said, it is certainly done. People do use PBS with a NAS.
And the subject has been beaten utterly to death. Lines have been drawn. Entrenchments in place. We have our opinions.

Here's my most recent breakdown of the NAS/PBS situation.

Post in thread 'Proxmox Backup VE as a virtual machine in a Proxmox VE Cluster'

Feb 21, 2025

Ok, this is going to be not-so-obvious, but give it a chance.

• The more common method of doing this is to mount the NFS share in the PBS filesystem and then setup a PBS datastore there. If you do this, you'll have to make some file system permission changes, and it will not perform well.

• The less common method, which I actually do employ, is to use the NFS as a Proxmox datastore and host a qcows virtual disk there. Attach that qcows disk to the PBS VM and build your PBS datastore there. This option performs MUCH BETTER than the above method. It still sucks.
  • ...

• tcabernoch

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