use proxmox backup server as nested virtualized on proxmox?

[openaspace]

Hellooooo
I already have a proxmox office server where with some approach i sync the remote proxmox server to have all backups and files sync.

It's possible to run the proxmox backup server inside proxmox?

Thank you.

 

[tom]

Recommended is a dedicated hardware for backups - if you Proxmox VE host fails and your Backup is a also on the failed host ...

If you are aware of this, just install the backup server on Proxmox VE (directly, not nested).

> apt install proxmox-backup-server

(before you do that, you have to add the pbs repository to your sources.list, see docs)

 

[DerDanilo]

Recommended is a dedicated hardware for backups - if you Proxmox VE host fails and your Backup is a also on the failed host ...

If you are aware of this, just install the backup server on Proxmox VE (directly, not nested).

> apt install proxmox-backup-server

(before you do that, you have to add the pbs repository to your sources.list, see docs)

Enabling CPU type "host" + aes should also be fine-ish right?

 

[tom]

Enabling CPU type "host" + aes should also be fine-ish right?

If you install on bare-metal (side-by-side with Proxmox VE), there is no VM config. If you run as VM (why?), setting to CPU to host is best practice for performance.

 

[openaspace]

Really Thank you.

What mean for userid adding the "remotes" proxmox server?

 

[DerDanilo]

If you install on bare-metal (side-by-side with Proxmox VE), there is no VM config. If you run as VM (why?), setting to CPU to host is best practice for performance.

I know that one can install PBS with PVE on the same host, but there are various reasons not do do so if one does require flexibility and stability.

Here are some ideas to "why?":
- Be able to quickly move whole systems to new hardware
- More easy use of e.g. Ceph RBD, inlcuding snapshots before updates etc.
- HA Backup Server backed by HA Storage (e.g. Ceph RBD)
- Limit PBS hardware resource usage to whatever one assigns to the VM. PBS could cause problems on the hypervisor if installed directly. Unless there is a way to limit PBS resources via configuration it can be a risk to install it aside PVE.
- Small projects where additional hardware is not an options (e.g. 2 server with cross host backups)
- Personal backup server which runs on a VPS with cheap backend storage

Most often PBS will be installed on bare-metal for sure, but there are some scenarios where this is not practical.

I am super curious if there will be backup agents for e.g. Synology, QNAP and other NAS solutions, which would be super nice in many ways. It could even give the PBS a wider customer range when official packages for NAS systems appear.

 

[oversite]

Hellooooo
I already have a proxmox office server where with some approach i sync the remote proxmox server to have all backups and files sync.

It's possible to run the proxmox backup server inside proxmox?

Thank you.

Hi, it's absolutely possible, works great. Even if bare metal is preferred and has it's pros also as VM it has some pros. We use it inside PVE for flexibility and redundancy. The backup data goes to NFS shared storage so we can reach it if the PVE goes down. The PBS VM itself is backed up using normal vzdump so we can restore it to another PVE if our current cluster has failed. We spend much time doing our work using the cluster remotely so running it as VM makes it very stable and reliable. The cluster hosting the PBS is a 5 node with ceph.

 

[turnicus]

Hello, I also installed PBS on top of PVE (for cross host backups). I chose the default ZFS partition for the virtual drive (which is on a ZFS pool on PVE). So I am using ZFS on top of ZFS, which looks a bit overkill to me...

Would I get better performance if the virtual drive was formatted in EXT4 ? Would I lose any feature?

 

[openaspace]

Hello, I also installed PBS on top of PVE (for cross host backups). I chose the default ZFS partition for the virtual drive (which is on a ZFS pool on PVE). So I am using ZFS on top of ZFS, which looks a bit overkill to me...

Would I get better performance if the virtual drive was formatted in EXT4 ? Would I lose any feature?

Yes, try with ext4 that don't need to use the ram

 

[openaspace]

Yes, try with ext4 that don't need to use the ram

My last solution is to store backups directly to cifs on Microsoft Azure.. if an host die , simple setup the new host , set Azure cifs and restore directly from the cloud using the proxmox interface.
If are not critical applications, less money, time and works, with only one host.

 

[turnicus]

Yes, try with ext4 that don't need to use the ram

Oh. I just double checked because I wasn't sure what I chose during installation:

Device       Start      End  Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sda1       34     2047     2014 1007K BIOS boot
/dev/sda2     2048  1050623  1048576  512M EFI System
/dev/sda3  1050624 67108830 66058207 31.5G Linux LVM

/dev/sdb1        2048 4194285567 4194283520   2T Solaris /usr & Apple ZFS
/dev/sdb9  4194285568 4194301951      16384   8M Solaris reserved 1

So:

• I did chose LVM/ext4 for the OS disk (32GB)
• I added the 2TB disk later through the GUI (Disks->ZFS->Create: ZFS)

So only the 2TB disk that I use as a datastore is "ZFS on top of ZFS" but it's the only option available so I'll stick with that. Thanks anyway for your comment and sorry for my unnecessary question.

 

[openaspace]

So only the 2TB disk that I use as a datastore is "ZFS on top of ZFS" but it's the only option available so I'll stick with that

You can partition manually to ext4 and add as directory storage i remember,

 

[turnicus]

You can partition manually to ext4 and add as directory storage i remember,

Oh thanks, I didn't see that. Would I lose any feature if the datastore is in a "directory storage" compared to a "zfs storage"?

 

[openaspace]

Oh thanks, I didn't see that. Would I lose any feature if the datastore is in a "directory storage" compared to a "zfs storage"?

For zfs you need a lot of ram and disk space.
In a experimental nested setup, zfs is only a problem for performances and stability

 

[saltarob]

Recommended is a dedicated hardware for backups - if you Proxmox VE host fails and your Backup is a also on the failed host ...

If you are aware of this, just install the backup server on Proxmox VE (directly, not nested).

> apt install proxmox-backup-server

(before you do that, you have to add the pbs repository to your sources.list, see docs)

Hi, I did > apt install proxmox-backup-server but now I can't access any hard disk to make a Datastore for the Backup Server. Initialize Disk is greyed out for all disks and no Mount-Units found. How can I setup a Datastore in the side-by-side installation?