Proxmox Backup Server Tour and My Experiences with PBS

I got over Proxmox Backup Server 2.1 and show my experiences with it and how it can be used to backup Proxmox VE systems easily, quickly and efficiency. I also show how I use PBS in my homelab.

[@strandvaskeren]

I totally agree with your views on pbs. I run a 3 node proxmox cluster connected to a san storage server, I've been doing full vm backups nightly onto a couple of nas boxes, which I still do. 3-4 months ago I installed a pbs server and started doing backups to that too, and I have to say I really like the way it does things, comparing blocks and only backing up whats needed and all that.
At first I used a proper rack server with lots of cores and ram for the pbs server, thinking that it needed a bunch of power, but now I run pbs on a tiny dual core nuc and it works just fine. Sure garbage collecting and pruning takes longer now, but who cares if garbage collection takes an hour rather than 10 minutes on the proper rack server, it's just a nightly task and doesn't interfere with stuff I need. It's been rock solid.
As for features I think it would be nice if pbs were able to pull backups from the proxmox cluster rather than having to schedule backup tasks on the proxmox cluster itself, but it's a minor niggle. I would also like if the pbs dashboard would integrate into my cluster dashboard, I control all 3 proxmox nodes from a single web interface, why not add the pbs server to that list too?

[@dominick253]

It would also be nice if it could act as a q device.

[@mbunds]

Your productions are priceless! I hope you become very, very wealthy, because your help with Proxmox has really helped! Where's your Patreon page?

[@ionskull13]

These videos are great for getting started in proxmox. Thank you

[@curmudgeoniii9762]

Another very very good presentation with great history and detail... I agree with Mark Bunds... Thank you for the very good work!!!

[@michaelcooper5490]

Very well done thank you. I was pretty impressed with this review of PBS. I had installed it as an alternative to PVE's native backup. Then i figured out it should have been my first choice, Thanks for the pointers and the tutorial, Have an awesome day.

[@lida4ever]

Backup is really important of Proxmox, when you considering migrate from VMware especially

[@donthateme1210]

Great vid, thanks for this! :)

[@PascalBrax]

Love the BRZ/GTR86 shirt!

[@pavlovsky0]

I’ve got an Hp lto 4 tape drive and it seems to work well. I don’t think many in home lab are using tape but I wanted to try it so got an old drive second hand.

[@auriavizia]

Is it working? I have HP1840, and i'm gonna try that..

[@pavlovsky0]

@@auriavizia it is but my sas controller card failed. I don't think anything to do with the drive itself. I'm getting a replacement controller card

[@auriavizia]

@@pavlovsky0 👍

[@pavlovsky0]

@@auriavizia got the new sas controller and the tape drive worked out of the box. The lto drive is an Hp storedge and it looks to be previously owned by university of Washington ecology department judging from property tag. I got a fresh tape and backed up all my vms from pbs. About 80 gigs and it ran like 25 min. I haven’t tried restoring from tape yet. I’m very happy as it seems to work very easily. I didn’t want any proprietary clunky software so real happy with the proxmox implementation.

[@auriavizia]

@@pavlovsky0 Have you done restore yet?

[@SKEnterprisesIndia]

We created a pbs rack server and huge storage bank and then directed backups of 4 independed pve at same time to pbs and it took for ever and did not work. Infact the drives in storage bank started failure. So still trying to figure out how to backup individual PVE together effienently to PBS. Any thoughts on this would be highly appreciated.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

I’d like to know what errors your having? Can you share more details about the issues your running into. Feel free to give me a email with more details and I can take a look.

[@mistakek]

Can you use the backup client to backup a pve host?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

PBS can be used to backup any files on a Debian based Linux system, and I have used it to backup folders on my Proxmox host. But its not able to do a full image backups of a system, so another method would be needed if you want a image backup of the PVE host. But I find it easiest enough to just reinstall the host and restore the individual VMS, so I don't generally do a full image of VM hosts.