Proxmox Client usage

[AraToken]

Hello Community!

sorry in advance for this somewhat silly question but i cannot find the information i need and decided to ask here.
I just recently found the PBS and i was wondering when exactly do i need to implement the backup client?

Do i need to install the client for every server i want to backup (including virtual machines on Proxmox VE?) Or do i need the client for machines outside of Proxmox, like other standalone machines?
Please correct me if i'm wrong but i assumed that i can create backups of my VMs with backup server even without the client installed.
Does the client only enable me to create incremental backups of my machines? Can i only do full backups when not using it?

Thank you in advance for help!

 

[Dominic]

Hi, Proxmox Backup Client is well integrated into Proxmox VE out of the box. You can create incremental backups of all your virtual machines from the web GUI. In addition, you can install Proxmox Backup client to other machines that are not Proxmox VE servers.

https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/introduction.html#architecture

I suggest installing PBS into a virtual machine to see how it works

 

[AraToken]

Hi!
thank you for the fast response! I tested some backups with and without the client.

One more question: Every backup created is incremental? is it possible for me to create full backups in addition to the incrementals?
For example: from monday to saturday incremental and one fullbackup at sunday?
Or is it not possible to do this for virtual machines? Maybe i'm missing a point here..

Thank you!

 

[oguz]

hi,

Every backup created is incremental? is it possible for me to create full backups in addition to the incrementals?

backups are always made incrementally. this is because of the chunking mechanism, which will deduplicate the chunks which were already referenced in the previous backups. also chunks that are already saved on the server won't be written to the datastore another time. that means the deduplication can happen client or server-side. therefore it's not needed to "force" a full backup with PBS.
each backup will still reference all the data it needs so they will function even if all the other ones are removed. the way chunks are removed is with the GC (garbage collection), once there's no backup referencing that chunk.

though if you want a full backup you can still do it with vzdump as normal (which lacks the deduplication)

 

[lukyjay]

Hi AraToken

You asked about standalone clients (outside of Proxmox, e.g. bare metal). This is a bash script I use to backup my Proxmox host via a cron job. I use a similar version on my notebook computer too. I hope you find this useful.

#!/bin/bash

export PBS_REPOSITORY=root@pam@192.168.1.2:pbs2
export PBS_PASSWORD=Yourrootpasswordgoeshere

proxmox-backup-client backup root.pxar:/ etcpve.pxar:/etc/pve mntstorageapp.pxar:/mnt/storage/Applications mntstoragedocs.pxar:/mnt/storage/Documents

It backs up the directories listed above. I found out the hard way (via a broken system and no working backups) that /etc/pve/ needs to be listed seperately to /. I have also listed some important directories from my mergerfs+snapraid pool.

Have a good weekend

Edit: Just to clarify... I have two servers. Both have PVE and PBS installed, they backup each other (but not themselves). So this script assumes your PVE host is being backed up to an external PBS server.

 

[kocio]

@lukyjay

It's good to know that /etc/pve is in fact not a real directory, but just a fuse-mounted database from /var/lib/pve-cluster/config.db, so probably the safest thing would be to backup this file (or directory /var/lib/pve-cluster).

 

[Fra]

As cited in https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/backup-client.html#creating-backups (in the "Caution" box), remember the final --include-dev /etc/pve if you want to backup /etc/pve:

this is our relative line in the backup script of the proxmox client:

/usr/bin/proxmox-backup-client backup etc.pxar:/etc root-home.pxar:/root home.pxar:/home var-spool-cron.pxar:/var/spool/cron --include-dev /etc/pve

(https://forum.proxmox.com/members/lukyjay.99174/ your pasting here added some wrong spaces)