What backup solution to use

[rigorm]

Hi,

i'm looking into a backup solution for my homelab. Current setup is like this :

• 4x proxmox nodes.
• 1x TrueNAS serving iSCSI / NFS
  • iSCSI is for the VM / CT disks
  • NFS mainly for file storage from those VM / CT

For now, the trueNAS is only serving the proxmox nodes (dedicated network to all the nodes on the backend and nothing connected to the frontend network)

Question is, what strategy can be used to backup my data is I would like full VM backups but be able to do some cherry picking when I need a specific file inside the backups.

Current choices I can see:

• A Proxmox Backup server
• another trueNAS server (I have it available) to backup the primary trueNAS

On both counts, I know I can do a full backups but i'm not sure about cherry picking.

any other suggestion that I missed ?

Thanks.

 

[Chris]

full VM backups but be able to do some cherry picking

Hi,
while there are a lot of different backup solutions, Proxmox Backup Server is what I would recommend, since it integrates nicely with PVE and allows you to backup and restore your VMs/CTs easily.
A further point in favor of Proxmox Backup Server is, that it allows you to create full backups of your VMs/CTs while deduplicating the data at the same time. This saves quite a lot of storage space for backups.
Also, it is possible to inspect backups via the cli client using proxmox-backup-client map or proxmox-backup-client mount, or navigate its contents via the WebUI for cherry picking.

 

[LnxBil]

In Addition to Chris' good answer:

Question is, what strategy can be used to backup my data is I would like full VM backups but be able to do some cherry picking when I need a specific file inside the backups.

That depends on how fast you want to get to the files and what software runs inside of your VM.

I do it like this:

• The fastest and easiest method I know is to use ZFS inside of a fileserver and Samba on top and do regular snapshots (e.g. every 15 minutes), so you can restore the files very very fast and every user can do it on their own from Windows properties dialog. ZFS itself can be send/received easily on every ZFS-capable storage system for backup of the system
• everything else is just a plain PVE backup

 

[rigorm]

Hi,
while there are a lot of different backup solutions, Proxmox Backup Server is what I would recommend, since it integrates nicely with PVE and allows you to backup and restore your VMs/CTs easily.
A further point in favor of Proxmox Backup Server is, that it allows you to create full backups of your VMs/CTs while deduplicating the data at the same time. This saves quite a lot of storage space for backups.
Also, it is possible to inspect backups via the cli client using proxmox-backup-client map or proxmox-backup-client mount, or navigate its contents via the WebUI for cherry picking.

Thanks, Thats the bit of info that was missing.

Can I install PBS as a VM with attached backup storage (not the primary TrueNAS in my case) in my PVE cluster ? Or do I need to install bare metal ?

Thanks !

 

[rigorm]

In Addition to Chris' good answer:


That depends on how fast you want to get to the files and what software runs inside of your VM.

I do it like this:

• The fastest and easiest method I know is to use ZFS inside of a fileserver and Samba on top and do regular snapshots (e.g. every 15 minutes), so you can restore the files very very fast and every user can do it on their own from Windows properties dialog. ZFS itself can be send/received easily on every ZFS-capable storage system for backup of the system
• everything else is just a plain PVE backup

While this looks good, I don't think I need a 15 window gap. I do need good backups as my VM OS are 2x Nvme drives in single disk.. so not much protection there but good speeds. I need to backup them to make sure I can restore them to another pool if needed.

i'd imagine that you're also using a trueNAS with ZFS and SMB sharing ?

 

[Chris]

Thanks, Thats the bit of info that was missing.

Can I install PBS as a VM with attached backup storage (not the primary TrueNAS in my case) in my PVE cluster ? Or do I need to install bare metal ?

Thanks !

I would recommend bare metal. While it is possible to install PBS as VM, the PVE host remains your single point of failure. Also, since PBS uses a chunk store to hold the backup data with a large number of relatively small files, using a network share as backing storage is not good. Enterprise grade SSDs are recommended.

 

[rigorm]

Thanks for all your help. I know what I need to do know

 

[Dunuin]

PBS also runs in a TrueNAS VM if you install it on top of Debian (PBS ISO installer only showed a black screen). That way you can also use that PBS to backup your PVE Node configs/system disks. For TrueNAS itself I would use a second TrueNAS server and setup replication.

 

[mikeinnyc]

While it is possible to install PBS as VM, the PVE host remains your single point of failure. Wouldn't a cluster setup solve any failure of PBS if VM? I'm curious because PBS is up on deck for me.

 

[rigorm]

PBS also runs in a TrueNAS VM if you install it on top of Debian (PBS ISO installer only showed a black screen). That way you can also use that PBS to backup your PVE Node configs/system disks. For TrueNAS itself I would use a second TrueNAS server and setup replication.

My primary truenas is core, not scale.

However, i could setup me second truenas with scale and setup PBS as a VM and use local XFS as PBS storage while also use the truenas side to setup replications to my primary.

 

[rigorm]

While it is possible to install PBS as VM, the PVE host remains your single point of failure. Wouldn't a cluster setup solve any failure of PBS if VM? I'm curious because PBS is up on deck for me.

Maybe if its a cluster with ceph srtup with local drives but if lile my setup with a truenas as a iSCSI vm disk setup, if truenas fails, no matter how much nodes you have in the cluster, you wont be able to restore anything... unless the PBS disks are on a seperate server.

 

[Dunuin]

My primary truenas is core, not scale.

TrueNAS Core can also run VMs. Got a TrueNAS Core here running a PBS VM.

 

[LnxBil]

i'd imagine that you're also using a trueNAS with ZFS and SMB sharing ?

No, almost all exclusively on Debian, for decades.

Yet, *NAS are good starting points for people not so familiar with setting everything up theirselves.

 

[LnxBil]

While it is possible to install PBS as VM, the PVE host remains your single point of failure. Wouldn't a cluster setup solve any failure of PBS if VM? I'm curious because PBS is up on deck for me.

General rule of thumb is to have dedicated (offsite) hardware for backup, so that you will be able to do a disaster recovery (e.g. flodding, fire or human error).

 

[Dunuin]

General rule of thumb is to have dedicated (offsite) hardware for backup, so that you will be able to do a disaster recovery (e.g. flodding, fire or human error).

In addition to that. You can also sync two PBS servers, so the offsite PBS pulls the backup snapshots from the onsite PBS. If you then set up tokens with limited privileges (only restore and backup but not prune) and a custom pruning task on the offsite PBS you also get protection against ransomware and human error, so no one can delete or overwrite backups by accident. But important then is not to set the "remove-vanished" option.

 

[mikeinnyc]

I say this because I have direct attached storage

General rule of thumb is to have dedicated (offsite) hardware for backup, so that you will be able to do a disaster recovery (e.g. flodding, fire or human error).

That would include a Direct Attached Storage unit that has a separate box connected to two nodes with a third node for a quorum. I could use the third node as bear metal and probably will down the road. I really do like Proxmox as it seems to have awesome support even from avg people. When I make it big I'm donating to these guys 100% because sometimes I get stumped and you guys can get me through all the lead paint chips I ate.