PVE Backup vs PBS Backup

[spetrillo]

Hello all,

I am fairly new to the Proxmox world, so apologies for the newbie questions. I come from a long VMware career and trying to look at alternatives for my clients.

I have setup a PBS server and it is connected to my PVE server. Am I mistaken or can the PVE do backups of vms without PBS? It seems to be that way? If that is the case then is there functionality to move PVE created backups to the PBS, say for longer term storage? Is there anything I buy in using a PBS to backup my vms, instead of the PVE functionality?

My next question goes to the backup of the PVE and PBS itself. Obviously keeping your vms protected is important but so is the actual PVE and PBS servers. Can either backup itself or can the PBS backup both itself and the PVE?

Thanks,
Steve

 

[tcabernoch]

Hello again. Cool, you got them connected.

"can the PVE do backups of vms without PBS?"
- Yes it can. PVE can backup directly to NAS or other storage without a PBS.

"is there functionality to move PVE created backups to the PBS"
- Not sure why you would want to do this. Make new backups via PBS. But if you really wanted to do this, you could rsync the old backups off your NAS onto the PBS datastore. But don't do that. Make new backups.

"Is there anything I buy in using a PBS to backup my vms"
- Not really. (A license? The license is actually pricey.) Maybe the hardware to run it on. PBS runs best on its own physical hardware, managing its own set of physical disks.

The difference between PVE and PBS backups can be a tad confusing at first. They look like they are the same thing in the PVE GUI.
PBS gives you several features not present in PVE. It's an independent server managing the backup data. It does dedup (quite effectively!). It runs verification jobs on your backups. It can manage namespaces for multiple backup sources. Paired with a remote PBS server, it can do replication. And the brand new feature is Fleecing, which allows the backup writes to cache locally if the remote storage is too slow and reduces the impact on the vm being backed up.

On the other hand, PVE backups, lacks most (all?) of these features. And what it does do, it uses your hosting server's resources.

 

[spetrillo]

Yes was able to get it connected to my PVEs and I have jobs ready to run tonight.

The fleecing feature...I read a bit about it and enabled it on my PVEs that have the backup job. My assumption was it will write the backups to local PVE storage and then copy it later to the PBS? Is that a correct assumption?

 

[spetrillo]

One addtl question about backup of physical hosts. Is this limited to servers or can desktop PCs be backed up with the PBS?

 

[_gabriel]

PVE can only backup its guests to PBS.
Physical hosts is out of the scope.

 

[floh8]

Is this limited to servers or can desktop PCs be backed up with the PBS?

The proxmox-backup-client is installable on Debian based systems. There exist some More ports you will find in the forum also for Windows but they dont come from proxmox and get therefor no support.

 

[spetrillo]

Will the proxmox backup client backup PVE servers? How do ppl backup their PBS server?

Second the connection info for my PBS is shown in the attached screenshot. I would like to edit this, so I can present on a different vlan/IP. How do I edit this?

 

[_gabriel]

How do ppl backup their PBS server?

Here, I only backup config files /etc/proxmox-backup/*.*
need chown root:backup & chmod 640 on restore.
Datastore backup is done with Sync from another PBS if required.
Proper documentation is the best.

edit: Same for PVE, backup main files like /etc/pve/qemu-server/*.conf, /etc/pve/*. * , /etc/network/interfaces, and notes about its configuration.

 

[floh8]

Will the proxmox backup client backup PVE servers

Pve is based on Debian.

How do ppl backup their PBS server?

u find different solutions here in the forum.

I would like to edit this, so I can present on a different vlan/IP. How do I edit this?

u see, that u cant edit this there. network is configured under the point system/network