Using an Amazon AWS S3 Bucket as backup storage

There is an open issue for this on our bug tracker [1], but no, currently this isn't supported. You may be able to use something s3fs-fuse to add this functionality [2]. However, be aware that there have been reports of issues with this approach, and we do not officially support that. So there are no guarantees about the stability of such a setup.

[1]: https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2943
[2]: https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse
 
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I manage IT for a small company (Proxmox PVE with 1TB NVMe disks + PBS with 2TB HDDs) and 2TB on iDRIVE S2 cloud.
The StarWind VTL is free to use? If it isn't how much it cost? There is no price online!

I can see the "VTL free" option and comparasion to commercial product but cannot understand the differences: local storage has a minus and cache has a 4 tape limit. Can you elaborate about this?

I'd like to understand how the VTL will offload to S3: can I do a local backup using VTL and later during the day it upload to S3 compatible storage?
Or this is LOCAL STORAGE (not present on VTL free ) so all backup will to be directly on cloud (and slooooow)?

Thanks

Jáder
 
Hey @jader,

StarWind VTL has free version. It has limitation on 4 local tapes (it is called cache), so you can have 4 local tapes at a time for backups, which can then be offloaded to cloud. You can do a local backup and later upload to cloud.
Free version is managed via powershell (script sapmles can be found here: C:\Program Files\StarWind Software\StarWind\StarWindX\Samples\powershell) and can be monitored via GUI.
Should help: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/re...tual-tape-library-deploy-using-cloud-storage/

Best regards,
Alex
 
abbbi said:
a new project that attempts to act as proxy to S3:

https://github.com/tizbac/pmoxs3backuproxy
Click to expand...
I'm sorry if I misunderstand your project, but I'd like to know if it allow us to use an S3 bucket as target for Proxmox backup.
I'd like to use iDrive (AWS competitor , much cheaper, with S3 protocol access too, to store replica from backups done localy.
So primary backup is done onsite and later exported/sync to iDrive using S3.
I'd like to understand how to do it ... and later I can create very detailed documentation to all other users.
 
You could always move your backups from a local drive to AWS using Rclone and run it as a cron job, if you are comfortable working from the command line. Rclone installs from a simple script https://rclone.org/install/
 
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louie1961 said:
You could always move your backups from a local drive to AWS using Rclone and run it as a cron job, if you are comfortable working from the command line. Rclone installs from a simple script https://rclone.org/install/
Click to expand...
How could I copy backups... should I upload entire tree for iDrive?
I'm using RCLONE on small installations with no PBS, but so it do a FULL BACKUP every day, and cost me all size on storage of iDrive.
If we can use PBS saving to S3, it would do incremental backups, so first would be 250GB (one client) and all others would be less than 200MB (doc e xls files most!).
It would be nicer to have a professional solution like PBS using a standand S3 protocol to create a powerfull solution.
 
I have used regular PVE backups and rclone them to iDrive (a cheaper S3 provider) for years, works fine and it's nice.
BUT only if your backup size is small, because this way all backups are FULL... so 250GB a day is a long upload EACH day... I'd prefer to use PBS and differential backups (a lot less to upload!)
 
jader said:
I'm sorry if I misunderstand your project, but I'd like to know if it allow us to use an S3 bucket as target for Proxmox backup.
I'd like to use iDrive (AWS competitor , much cheaper, with S3 protocol access too, to store replica from backups done localy.
So primary backup is done onsite and later exported/sync to iDrive using S3.
I'd like to understand how to do it ... and later I can create very detailed documentation to all other users.
Click to expand...

the proxy basically simulates an Proxmox Backup server, just that it stores the data in S3 natively.
It makes most sense if you use it as upstream backup server where you set it as remote target to push
the data from your local proxmox backup server instance to an bucket.

You can also use it as primary backup storage, you configure it like an PBS in PVE for backup targets.
You can also use it as backup target for the regular proxmox-backup-client.
Depends on your usecase.

You may want to consider to read the README entirely, it describes how to use it.
 
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Don't use something like rclone or hacks like s3fs for backing up your data stores inside PBS. The existing hacks (like s3fs) are not supported and rclone is known to break backups. At the moment sadly there is no option for syncing PBS backups to cloud storage.
The only supported options are to use another PBS (e.G. from a PBS as a service provider like Inett or tuxis.nl or a PBS installed on a vserver or dedicated server ) as offsite backup, or create an air-gapped backup on a tape or removable datastore (aka external usb disc).
See following older discussions on the subject:
J

Post in thread 'Backup PBS to cloud provider with incremental chunks'

Hello,

this most likely won't work or in other words: You can do this, but then your backups will get broken which explains why nobody uses this:
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/datastore-synced-with-rclone-broken.154709/
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/pbs-appears-not-to-write-to-disk.157751/

You have following options:

  • Using a PBS cloud provider like this one: https://www.tuxis.nl/de/proxmox-backup-server/ Tuxis don't sell to private customers outside the Netherlands or in general to customers outside the EU but they might have resellers (I know of at...
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Z

Thread 'Datastore synced with Rclone broken?'

I'm trying to set up a remote sync to a friend's RPI for my Proxmox Backup Server. I've been using this script that uses Rclone with an encrypted remote (Crypt) on a schedule:
Bash: 
#!/bin/bash

# A simple script to back up PBS to Crypt remote

_lock_file=/root/.tertiary_backup.lock

_schedule_time=1:30
_max_duration="7.5h"
_cutoff_mode="soft"

_datastore_dir_name=Primary_Backup
_datastore_dir_path=/mnt/datastore/$_datastore_dir_name
_config_dir=$_datastore_dir_path/host_backup

_remote_user=user
_remote_ip=tailscale-ip
_remote_port=22
_remote_name=Tertiary_Backup_Crypt...
S

Thread 'PBS appears not to write to disk'

Hello friends.

New user of Proxmox and PBS here. I'm evaluating it for use in a tech company that is starting to need virtualization of a few services. Right now I have a basic working config on a local server:

PVE - running 4 x VMs
PBS - also running as a VM inside PVE. Datastore is configured to point at a section of thin storage within PVE, not a dedicated disk (yet).

My short term aim is to sync the backups on PBS with a cloud storage provider using Rclone. I am having trouble reading the backup files off the disk inside PBS. The backup appears to go fine from PVE-PBS. I can...
 
abbbi said:
the proxy basically simulates an Proxmox Backup server, just that it stores the data in S3 natively.
It makes most sense if you use it as upstream backup server where you set it as remote target to push
the data from your local proxmox backup server instance to an bucket.

You can also use it as primary backup storage, you configure it like an PBS in PVE for backup targets.
You can also use it as backup target for the regular proxmox-backup-client.
Depends on your usecase.

You may want to consider to read the README entirely, it describes how to use it.
Click to expand...
Hi,

Thanks for your answer.
So let me try to explain what I undestand:
I have a local PVE + local PBS + this "PBS proxy" running as a service somewhere in LAN and connected to external any S3 storage .
PVE backups are done in local PBS, later replicated to "PBS proxy" that uses external S3 storage .
Everything uses PVE/PBS GUI and configurations to backup and restore.
Is that right?

If so, I'd like to try it and create extensive documentation to help others to know and use the project!

Thanks

Jáder
 
jader said:
Hi,

Thanks for your answer.
So let me try to explain what I undestand:
I have a local PVE + local PBS + this "PBS proxy" running as a service somewhere in LAN and connected to external any S3 storage .
PVE backups are done in local PBS, later replicated to "PBS proxy" that uses external S3 storage .
Click to expand...

yes, that is one way. The advantage of this method is that pulling the backups from the Proxy and its S3 storage
using the pull method is done in parallel, that can be a benefit performance wise.

Alternate way is to configure the proxy directly in PVE as main PBS. This will however may become a downside
during restore as in restore performance (blocks are requested by PVE sequentially, which may not perform as good)

What setup suits your needs best is up to you.

jader said:
Everything uses PVE/PBS GUI and configurations to backup and restore.
Is that right?
Click to expand...

yes, for common actions this is true. The included garbage collector to prune old backups from the S3 backend
is however a seperate executable that you must execute periodically.
 
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I don't want to be a killjoy but just a reminder: Although I like the idea of a PBS/S3 wrapper a lot that's just another solution (like s3fs and similiar hacks) which is not from the Proxmox team, thus it's not officially supported. So I wouldn't run this in a business-critical environment. Using it in your homelab (if you are fine with potential dataloss) is a different thing of course.

And just you don't get the wrong idea: I think it's great somebody did this because this approach is exactly what I would like to have as native S3 support from the Proxmox team. Although personally I would prefer if they would implement it for rclone because then not only S3 but everything supported by rclone could be used as a pseudo-PBS for cloud backup.
 
Johannes S said:
I don't want to be a killjoy but just a reminder: Although I like the idea of a PBS/S3 wrapper a lot that's just another solution (like s3fs and similiar hacks) which is not from the Proxmox team, thus it's not officially supported.
Click to expand...

neither is PBS/PVE w/o subscription or even the underlying OS. So what point do you want to prove here? Its OSS; read the code and decide if you want to use it. Nowhere in the README its written that this is an enterprise ready thing :)
 
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Johannes S said:
I don't want to be a killjoy but just a reminder: Although I like the idea of a PBS/S3 wrapper a lot that's just another solution (like s3fs and similiar hacks) which is not from the Proxmox team, thus it's not officially supported. So I wouldn't run this in a business-critical environment. Using it in your homelab (if you are fine with potential dataloss) is a different thing of course.

And just you don't get the wrong idea: I think it's great somebody did this because this approach is exactly what I would like to have as native S3 support from the Proxmox team. Although personally I would prefer if they would implement it for rclone because then not only S3 but everything supported by rclone could be used as a pseudo-PBS for cloud backup.
Click to expand...
I understand the risks of not being officially supported.
I'd to understand why it should be risky : there are any way to get a corrupted backup?
Are not all updates verifyed by a CRC or somethink like that?
Don't get me wrong: I LOVE RCLONE, but it cannot connect to PVE/PBS so it's not an option! :D
When I do a PVE backup, it's a full clone each time, uploads takes time, space is consumed for ALL DATA each single copy, so a 250GB data backup generates a 150GB compressed file and a 5 days backup would be 3/4 of TERABYTE... even just 5GB changed each day (5x 5GB = 25GB + 150GB = 175GB ; less tha 2 days of full backups!)
 
I just want to add that there is a funded (by sia.tech with 80k+) Cloud integration project for pbs. You can find more here:
https://forum.sia.tech/t/standard-grant-proxmox-backup-server-cloud-extension
https://forum.sia.tech/t/standard-grant-proposal-proxmox-backup-cloud-extension-continuation/764/17
GitHub: https://github.com/AZComputerSolutions/PBSCloudBackupModule

What I think, is that if you all would like cloud integration and there is a project, that is funded, it would be a good idea to maybe help to get this 1. into pbs ode, 2nd test this out 3. suggest improvements.
I think they have even introduced themselves here https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/external-datastore.137319/
They said they are aktive in some pbs mailing list. Sadly I am too dumb to use mailing lists, 1. because I never find anything there, and the formatting is so bad, I need 2h just to find the start of a message, not even talking about searching something.

But all in all, pbs is one of the few open source solutions for backup, that can’t do cloud. That’s just lame.
 
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