RHEL support for Proxmox Backup Server

[microlinux]

Hi,

After playing around with Proxmox Backup Server for a couple weeks, I must say I really like it.

One thing that would be very nice : support for RHEL/CentOS/Oracle Linux. It would be nice if all my Red Hat-based hypervisors could send their VM backups to PBS. I don't mind if there's a nice interface, the command line will do great. Maybe another option to restore VM's from PBS, and I guess that's it.

Given the number of Red Hat-based server installations out there, this would come in handy for a lot (!) of admins.

This was discussed a while ago on the CentOS mailing list, but there seems to be no PBS-like solution out there. According to some users, incremental backups can be achieved, but not without jumping through burning loops.

Cheers,

Niki

 

[t.lamprecht]

Hi!

There are currently no direct plans to implement that, I'm afraid. The current integration relies on quite some QEMU downstream patches, after all we have a full-blown rust async stack we map to QEMUs coroutine/AIO stack, among other things.
Some of those patches are up-streamable, and we plan to integrate those but not all are at the moment. Even if, it would probably require years for reaching RHEL repos.

But, if you already use KVM based virtualization in would be relatively easy to migrate to Proxmox VE, where we can have a much better Proxmox Backup Server integration. Upcoming live-restore and file-level restore for block level based (VM) backups can only be done in such a way there.

So, why not migrate those RHEL hosts to Proxmox VE?

 

[microlinux]

So, why not migrate those RHEL hosts to Proxmox VE?

That's a good question.

One thing I like about RHEL-based systems are the ten years of low-risk support that go with them. Meaning the servers I setup back in 2014 for a particular task will be supported with security updates until 2024, without me having to worry about new features full of new bugs and surprises. Which is the concept of enterprise Linux, and which is the reason folks like SUSE Enterprise or RHEL.

This being said, I've also used Debian in the past (back in the days of Potato, Woody and Sarge). I've installed Proxmox 5.4 on a sandbox machine and tried a live upgrade to 6.3, and things went smoothly. So I'm considering the idea.

Cheers,

Niki

 

[t.lamprecht]

One thing I like about RHEL-based systems are the ten years of low-risk support that go with them. Meaning the servers I setup back in 2014 for a particular task will be supported with security updates until 2024, without me having to worry about new features full of new bugs and surprises. Which is the concept of enterprise Linux, and which is the reason folks like SUSE Enterprise or RHEL.

We provide a stable upgrade path and an enterprise repository, which means new updates and features get battle-tested by hundred thousand machines, though.
First those updates go on our internal staging repository and run on internal dev/production, then move to the public test repository where people can point their test HW too, and then, when normally all obvious bugs got shaken out, they move onto pve-no-subscription. Only when there are no reports about actual regressions there for a while they move onto the enterprise repository.
With that workflow you can get modern, secure updates and features while minimizing the exposure to regressions a lot. It definitively has some perks to run a modern stack, and not, for example, a 2.6.32 or 3.10 kernel, one just cannot backport everything without bringing the bugs too, and on an older system those tend to be worse, as they are more obscure less people look at them and patch backports seldom apply cleanly, so changes are required (which means regression potential again). There is more than one way to do enterprise Linux, and none of them is perfect 100% IMO

This being said, I've also used Debian in the past (back in the days of Potato, Woody and Sarge). I've installed Proxmox 5.4 on a sandbox machine and tried a live upgrade to 6.3, and things went smoothly. So I'm considering the idea.

Great to hear!