What if pbs fails?

[kenucho]

I'm a newbie in these environments so please forgive me if my questions are somewhat naïve.

Assuming: I have a pbs with a 1 hdd for the operating system (pbs) and 5 hdd configured with zfs to store backup from a cluster.

how can i recover the backups if the hdd containing the OS dies?

Can I reinstall pbs with a new hdd and it will recognize the zfs raid and see the backups?

 

[sterzy]

Can I reinstall pbs with a new hdd and it will recognize the zfs raid and see the backups?

You'll need to reimport the pool and then add it as a datastore, but I think that should be it. All the necessary info should be stored in the ZFS pool.

Oh also, the fingerprint of the PBS will likely change, so you need to update that on the PVE side as well. You could work around that by using proper certificates instead of fingerprints, though.

 

[kenucho]

Hello Sterzy. Thanks for the advice. I will test that scenario an see how it goes.
I mean: I'm going to simulate the failure of the system drive on the PBS, make a clean installation and reimport the pool.

As for the certificates, how do i get one?

 

[sterzy]

As for the certificates, how do i get one?

Depends, you could use Let's encrypt certificates. Alternatively you could also set up your own CA and use self-signed certificates. You can read more about that in the manual [1].

[1]: https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/sysadmin.html#certificate-management

 

[kenucho]

Awesome! Thanks!

I'll keep you updated about the failure simulation and import.

 

[kenucho]

Update on the test....
I simulated a OS disk crash and made a fresh installation of PBS leaving the zfs raid intact. I imported the pool. The pool seems ok but the backups are not showing. The backups are there and I can access them from the console at /mnt/datastore/testzfs/vm
but I don't see them on the GUI. (testzfs is the name I gave to the pool)
Advice? (I must be missing some step...)

 

[Dunuin]

All the necessary info should be stored in the ZFS pool.

Did that and it was very annoying...backup snapshots were owned by a user that wasn't existing on the new PBS so I had to manually change the owner of each single of the hundreds backup snapshots by hand as there is no bulk editing.

Make sure to also backup your PBSs "/etc" folder. Especially "/etc/proxmox-backup" so you got a copy of all the PBS settings.

I simulated a OS disk crash and made a fresh installation of PBS leaving the zfs raid intact. I imported the pool. The pool seems ok but the backups are not showing. The backups are there and I can access them from the console at /mnt/datastore/testzfs/vm

After importing the pool you have to manually edit the /etc/proxmox-backup/datastore.cfg and add a datastore there pointing to the path of the imported datastore. Something like:

datastore: YourDatastoreName
        path /path/to/imported/datastore

 

[kenucho]

Thanks Dunuin! It worked like charm!
Fresh install, import pool, edit datastore.cfg and that's it