[SOLVED] Why is a mount through rclone not advised?

[Tunebox]

Hello,
i got a question, recently i set up my homelab with proxmox and im loving it. My node has 2 sotrages, 1x m.2 where my machines are running on and 1x SSD where i put backups and nothing more.
I tried a restore and it worked flawless.
Anyway since i got my documents safed on a LXC, i want to do a backup off-site as well in case of fire, burglar, lightning or whatever.

So i installed rclone, connected it to my cloudstorage (protondrive) and mounted the rclone connector. It was very easy and now i have this proton drive as a directory as storage in PVE (mind you i had to do do the argument --vfs-cache-mode full. Otherwise it didnt work).
I tried backup to it and also a restore and it worked flawless.
So i am happy that i can do backups now through the proxmox gui and i also think that this is awesome!!

BUT i am reading now that like nobody recommends this way of a backup. See here for example:

J

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

Nov 25, 2024

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...

• Johannes S

• 

TLDR; its always recommended to use rclone for a copy, never to mount it and i am asking why since its so much easier and cooler? What am i missing?
Thanks!
Have a nice holiday.

 

[gfngfn256]

I don't use rclone with PVE (only on other systems) but I'll tell you what I think:

Firstly I assume (& that's what it looks like in your post), you have installed rclone as a storage type in PVE (& have type backups), but your rclone drive has nothing to do with PBS. As I see it, skimming through those posts you linked to, all the "problems" with rclone were PBS specific, not Proxmox backups per se. I believe their problems stem from the chunk-element incorporated within PBS not "behaving" with rclone. However assuming you are doing regular vzdump Proxmox backups to an rcloned storage location, I don't see reason why you should suffer their issues.

Where I do see potential for a problem is in a scenario where that remote rcloned storage location goes unavailable, this can lead to problems with Proxmox both while booting-up & not finding that defined storage within it's backend storage setup, & also in committing scheduled backups to that location which has become unavailable at such a time.

Secondly, I don't like making major adjustments to the Proxmox host environment, this can lead to a host of problems (pun intended!), both with updates & future incompatibilities; search these forums for more info! I consider adding rclone to be a major adjustment. I have a rule-of-thumb; if you can't re-install your Proxmox system on-the-fly (within a reasonable time frame) - it has been majorly adjusted. I only make changes I cannot avoid in ANY way.

Personally, if I did want to use an rcloned remote location, I'd probably do it myself in-house, i.e. I would not setup that rclone in the Proxmox backend storage, but rather manually (or by automated script) to sync/copy periodically the locally saved backups to that rcloned drive. You even probably could make an LXC/VM to accomplish this - but that is for another time.

Anyway - good luck & YMMV.

 

[Kingneutron]

^ This. Sometimes you need to look at the issue from another angle and devise a workaround

 

[Johannes S]

TLDR; its always recommended to use rclone for a copy, never to mount it and i am asking why since its so much easier and cooler? What am i missing?
Thanks!
Have a nice holiday.

As the author of the quoted post: rclone is known to bring trouble if you sync PBS datastores with it. There are enough reports about broken datastores after syncing them with rclone I wouldn't trust anything but PBS native sync feature for handling them.

For vma-Archives made with Proxmox native backup function it's a different Story. Using rclone for them should be fine. I wouldn't use the mount function though: If something goes wrong you might end up in writing all your backups to your local disk without ever syncing them to your cloud storage without even noticing it. The better approach would be to setup a daily/hourly/whatever cronjob or systemd Timer to sync your vma files to your cloud storage and notifications to inform you in case the sync fails.

HTH, Johannes.

 

[Tunebox]

HI all,
thanks for the replies.

I see. I understood that you should not sure PBS with rclone, i was mostly asking why the rclone mount is not advised.
Guy guys nailed it. Will do a vzdump with rclone to my cloud for now.

Also i had a look at tuxis which seems awesome with a cloud PBS!!

Thank you all and i wish oyu guys a successful 2025.

 

[gfngfn256]

Happy you are sorted. Maybe mark this thread as Solved. At the top of the thread, choose the Edit thread button, then from the (no prefix) dropdown choose Solved.