Hello all,

I’m hoping to get some advice on my self hosting environment. I currently run Proxmox VE with a few VMs, and use Proxmox VE’s built in VM backup method to my NAS. I don’t currently have a good backup method for the host server itself, and I know I’m playing with fire not having that properly backed up.

I have an older laptop that I’m considering turning into a Proxmox Backup Server, which should allow me to backup the host server and VMs, which would make me feel a lot better. The one thing I haven’t really seen info on in my research is if there’s a convenient way to backup THE backup server. If anyone uses PBS, do you back that up as well? How so?

I appreciate any assistance or advice!

  • GooeyGlob@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    5 hours ago

    The real benefit of PBS is it does not store the backup as just a 1:1 dump of the VM disk, it’s incremental - if the VM you’re backing up for say the 3rd or 4th or 20th time doesn’t have much new or changed data, it’s not a linearly increasing amount of storage on your backup server, the new backup is actually trivially small. This really helps you have longer backup retention if files aren’t actually changing all that often.

    I got tired of stressing about whether my backup host might be down when my primary Proxmox host dies, even if they’re in different data centers - well, as far as I know anyway! Now I just use BackBlaze B2 storage for the PBS off-site backup (compatible with Amazon S3), albeit it’s a little finnicky to set up and working 100%. Yes it’s still ‘just someone else’s computer’, but for the ~12 bucks it’s costing me for almost 2TB of backup data I am not stressing about it.