Running containers on PBS

[willdashwood]

This may seem like a strange one, but is it possible to run docker or perhaps LXC on a Proxmox Backup Server that is running on bare metal? The reason is that the server in question has a huge amount of storage space and we'd like to run some of our own applications on there. However, we don't want to break or interfere with PBS.

Has anyone done something similar? Presumably I could just install docker manually and then it won't even touch the repos?

 

[VictorSTS]

If you want to use VMs or LXC it is a better idea to install Proxmox PVE and then PBS along PVE. This is what I use for very small deployments with just one server. If you plan to use docker only, you don't need PVE and you could add docker repositories manually to a PBS server.

In any case it's not recomended to use third party repos with PVE or PBS, as problems may arise if some package is offered by both Debian/Proxmox and the 3rd party repo, so I recomend to use a VM + docker inside it to be on the safe side.

 

[willdashwood]

Unfortunately reinstalling is not an option as this is already in use as one of our backup servers.

Yeah I didn't fancy touching the repos but I figured installing the packages manually, as per link, might be an OK option. Just wondered if anyone else had tried the same thing before. Maybe I'll do it on a test server first.

 

[Dunuin]

You can install the "proxmox-server" package on top of PVE. I would bet it also works to install the "proxmox-ve" package on top of PBS.

 

[willdashwood]

You can install the "proxmox-server" package on top of PVE. I would bet it also works to install the "proxmox-ve" package on top of PBS.

I've only ever done brand new fresh installations before. I can see plenty of people installing PBS on an existing PVE installation but not the other way around. Any pointers?

 

[Dunuin]

I guess thats similar to installing PVE on top of Debian: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_11_Bullseye

So adding the PVE repo (echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bullseye pve-no-subscription" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-install-repo.list && wget https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/proxmox-release-bullseye.gpg -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bullseye.gpg ) and then running apt update && apt install proxmox-ve postfix open-iscsi

You could try it in VM on PVE first if you want to make sure that it works before touching your productive system.

 

[willdashwood]

Yeah I think testing might be best. To be honest I'd rather run docker so I think that will be first my first test. If that doesn't work I can roll back the VM and try PVE. Cheers!