PVE 6.1-7 Backup Plan

[Jarvar]

Hello Proxmox community.
It has been a while, and I have been rethinking my backup strategy.

What would be the recommended backup procedure?
Or a recommended backup procedure?
I am running Windows Server 2019 with a SQL Express Database on a separate vmdisk within the VM. So far I have been running internal Windows Server Full Backups internally to an external USB. To be safe I have also been running Veam Agent for Windows Backup for Bare Metal Install. All of which I think is unecessary since we would just qmrestore our vzdump.
However I wanted to be safe.
Now the thing if we run a vzdum through the backup gui nightly. However on our old server it ended being a lot of writes everyday so that we were averaging a little under 1 TB in a week and pretty much 17TB in about 4 months.
I spoke to somebody else and they inquired about the possibility of making snapshots daily which take up less space and then making a vzdump backup less often.

They mentioned like in the event of ransomware, by the time it is detected or some corruption, virus problem etc... The incremental backups if spaced too closely together like 5 days a week, they could already be compromised. So I will hold weekly and maybe monthly ones as well.
Any suggestions?
Is it possible to make snapshots regulary instead of full vzdumps?
can VMs with snapshots be restored? or there has to be a vzdump type snapshot?

I explored the possibility of zfs send/receive to an separate device and restore. However, I found this process more involved, a configuration file needed to be edited manually as well. However it is doable.

I welcome any suggestions. I am fairly new with all this stuff.
Thank you.

 

[Dominic]

Snapshots are not backups. You can find a lot of information about this on the internet, for example:

Usually, snapshots are used to test software updates or for unsafe operations on a VM, and then returned to the initial state if needed — think about it as a bookmark or an undo button. Snapshots are not a full copy of the base disk, therefore, they are not sufficient to restore a VM in case of storage failure. (source)

If you can live with the downtime, using the stop mode of the Proxmox VE Backup (vzdump) provides the highest consistency (documentation).

 

[tom]

If you can live with the downtime, using the stop mode

Please note, also in "stop mode", the downtime is minimal as there is only a reboot necessary.

Downtime = reboot time.

 

[Jarvar]

Please note, also in "stop mode", the downtime is minimal as there is only a reboot necessary.

Downtime = reboot time.

Thank you @Dominic and @tom
I had originally set this up, but after some deliberation I switched to the vzdump snapshot mode because it was faster and did not result in the rebooting of my server.
I'm wondering if it is good to reboot the Windows Server nightly when I run backups? This would mean any security updates or changes would get installed when the system rebooted nightly.
I thought the recommendation would be to schedule reboots.
I think that was my biggest qualm with it. Or else I do like that the full Stop method would result in higher consistency and the option to use gzip over lzo.