[pve-devel] Proxmox Backup Server (beta)

[Martin Maurer]

We are proud to announce the first beta release of our new Proxmox Backup Server.

It's an enterprise-class client-server backup software that backups virtual machines, containers, and physical hosts. It is specially optimized for the Proxmox Virtual Environment platform and allows you to backup and replicate your data securely. It provides easy management with a command line and web-based user interface, and is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (GNU AGPL, v3).

Proxmox Backup Server supports incremental backups, deduplication, compression and authenticated encryption. Using Rust https://www.rust-lang.org/ as implementation language guarantees high performance, low resource usage, and a safe, high quality code base. It features strong encryption done on the client side. Thus, it’s possible to backup data to not fully trusted targets.

Main Features

Support for Proxmox VE:
The Proxmox Virtual Environment is fully supported and you can easily backup virtual machines (supporting QEMU dirty bitmaps - https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/interop/bitmaps.html) and containers.

Performance:
The whole software stack is written in Rust https://www.rust-lang.org/, to provide high speed and memory efficiency.

Deduplication:
Periodic backups produce large amounts of duplicate data. The deduplication layer avoids redundancy and minimizes the used storage space.

Incremental backups:
Changes between backups are typically low. Reading and sending only the delta reduces storage and network impact of backups.

Data Integrity:
The built in SHA-256 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2 checksum algorithm assures the accuracy and consistency of your backups.

Remote Sync:
It is possible to efficiently synchronize data to remote sites. Only deltas containing new data are transferred.

Compression:
The ultra fast Zstandard compression is able to compress several gigabytes of data per second.

Encryption:
Backups can be encrypted on the client-side using AES-256 in Galois/Counter Mode (GCM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galois/Counter_Mode). This authenticated encryption mode provides very high performance on modern hardware.

Web interface:
Manage Proxmox backups with the integrated web-based user interface.

Open Source:
No secrets. Proxmox Backup Server is free and open-source software. The source code is licensed under AGPL, v3.

Support:
Enterprise support will be available from Proxmox.

And of course - Backups can be restored!

Release notes
https://pbs.proxmox.com/wiki/index.php/Roadmap

Download
https://www.proxmox.com/downloads
Alternate ISO download:
http://download.proxmox.com/iso

Documentation
https://pbs.proxmox.com

Community Forum
https://forum.proxmox.com

Source Code
https://git.proxmox.com

Bugtracker
https://bugzilla.proxmox.com

FAQ
Q: How does this integrate into Proxmox VE?
A: Just add your Proxmox Backup Server storage as new storage backup target to your Proxmox VE. Make sure that you have at least pve-manager 6.2-9 installed.

Q: What will happen with the existing Proxmox VE backup (vzdump)?
A: You can still use vzdump. The new backup is an additional but very powerful way to backup and restore your VMs and container.

Q: Can I already backup my other Debian servers (file backup agent)?
A: Yes, just install the Proxmox Backup Client (https://pbs.proxmox.com/docs/installation.html#install-proxmox-backup-client-on-debian).

Q: Are there already backup agents for other distributions?
A: Not packaged yet, but using a statically linked binary should work in most cases on modern Linux OS (work in progress).

Q: Is there any recommended server hardware for the Proxmox Backup Server?
A: Use enterprise class server hardware with enough disks for the (big) ZFS pool holding your backup data. The Backup Server should be in the same datacenter as your Proxmox VE hosts.

Q: Where can I get more information about coming feature updates?
A: Follow the announcement forum, pbs-devel mailing list https://lists.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pbs-devel, and subscribe to our newsletter https://www.proxmox.com/news.

Please help us reaching the final release date by testing this beta and by providing feedback via https://forum.proxmox.com

-- 
Best Regards,

Martin Maurer

martin at proxmox.com
https://www.proxmox.com