[SOLVED] Use free space on system for backup

muekno

Member
Dec 15, 2023
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I set up a new backup server. 250GB M2 SSD LVM for system and a1TB SSD ZFS for backups.
Now on the system disk are nearly 200GB free, so I like to have about 150GB for extra backup space.
No idea how to make this a extra datastore
need hint

Regards
Rainer
 
Choose LVM on both disk and you could spaces in a lvm pool and a filesystem onto if you want to.
With zfs both disks must be in the same pool which isn't quiet good with one 250GB and one 1TB disk.
 
ZFS on the 1TB disk is fix. The free space on the LVM partition may be a separate storage. I just like to have it for manual extra backups i.e. for test VMs

Regards
Rainer
 
Then if it's just extra space just "mkdir /backup-tests" and you could use that dir ... :)
 
If you click the Add Datastore button at the bottom, you can add any local folder as a datastore.
So that's anything. People do NFS mounts using this same method. Or custom ZFS mounts.
If it looks like a folder in the file system, you can click the Add Datastore button and map to it.

I think there should be more to this than just "mkdir /backup-test".
You want to reserve at least 10gb for your system. Somehow. Or your backups will flood out your root disk and lockup the whole machine.
I know how to do that with ZFS, but your root is LVM.
I guess, go figure that bit out. Make sure you don't completely fill your root.
 
Last edited:
So far so fine, on the PBS I can see the new storage, but not on my PVE, while the PVE can see the the other datastore from that PBS

Regards
Rainer
 
To specify, the second Datastore is seen on the PBS under "Datastore" but I find no way to add it under "Datacenter" or my PVE. Meaning it is only seen on the PBS.

Regards
Rainer
 
That's true. If you have two datastores, you need to mount them individually in PVE.

This dialog box asks which datastore to mount. It does not mount 'the server', it mounts one datastore.
Datacenter > Storage > Add > Proxmox Backup Server

So run through the dialog again and mount the second datastore.
 
Add a new backup server the first filed id ID: there I wrote PVS2 as when adding the new store. I thought this is the ID of the Backup server, but its is the ID of the storage I know now, So I got a "does exist" error message, trying PBS2a works.

S
 
Right.
As you can see, the mount name in PVE can be whatever you want, for whatever purpose you decide.
If i was doing your mounts, I'd probly call em pbs-1tb and pbs-250gb, as that seems to be what defines them.

For my end users, i create distinctive labels for the multiple mounts to the same machine.
I have it all in one physical datastore, but I've broken it up into Namespaces.
Each mount only points into one namespace, and each Namespace has a purpose.
For my Sync Job Namespace and my Backup Job Namespace mounts in PVE, I label them as such.
colo-zone-sync
colo-zone-back

Well, that's cool. You sorted all that out. Right on.
 
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