I installed Proxmox Backup Server in a VM on my nas to see what all the fuss was about. I messed with it for a but but then the install got botched (not PBS’s fault) and I didn’t bother messing with it anymore. What I have been doing is, on each of my nodes, just setting up scheduled backups of VMs to a share on my NAS. I can’t figure out why using PBS would be any better that just doing that but people seem to like it. I only have to do this once on each node. Could anyone enlighten me as to what I am not seeing in PBS that makes it better?
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I think the integration, dedup, garbage collection as a whole. I personally love my PBS server.
Agreed. The options to set retention across multiple jobs is great, too.
There is a lot to love- dedup, garbage collection, pruning/retention, sync jobs, verification, etc. All of that dwarfs the normal backup process for proxmox itself.
Other people have mentioned de-duplication; to better explain it, PBS backups can be incremental - they will only save the changes between the current state and the previous backup. This will save you a TON of space on backups, which means you can take them more often and retain them for longer.
PVE’s backup just makes a compressed copy of the disk images and calls it a day.
PBS runs as a separate solution because that way it can be used to manage multiple clusters, it can keep backups isolated from those clusters, etc.
I’ve found it easier to just keep storage snapshots of the backing NAS for the VM images. Back those up on another slow NAS. And periodically refresh an off-site storage.
It’s not as atomic, but I can restore the VM images to various points in time.
It’s helpful for larger backup jobs, multiple tapes and backup tiering.
Its not for everyone really.
You didn’t say what you are using for your scheduled backups. If it’s something like Borg backup you got a similar level of functionality, CLI instead of a nice UI though.
I have been using Borg for years and recently also installed PBS. What I do like about it is that the UI is similar to PVE and that it nicely integrates the backup prcess into the UI which makes handling easier and in the end less error prone when it comes to restores I guess. From where I stand right now I will likely keep PBS for things which run on PVE, Borg for the rest of the world.
I was specifically talking about the backup of VMs and containers using the built-in backup function in the PVE UI. I just pick my smb share as the backup location. I didn’t know you could use PBS to backup from non-PVE *environments. For my windows laptop, which I do most of my work on right now, I use Cobain Galaxy to backup to a smb share on the same nas. I don’t have need for backups on my Debian laptop, I don’t really use it in a way where I need resistance storage at this time.
*sorry for the RAS syndrome
