[PVE-User] Revisited: External disk backup using PBS - Requesting Criticism/Advice?

[Lindsay Mathieson]

On 10/04/2021 5:10 pm, Arjen via pve-user wrote:
> Don't expect to be able to backup the PBS container with 4TB to a 2TB external drive.

I only passed 2TB through and the actual backup data comes to 1.3TB

>   The Datastore of a PSB does not compress much further and Proxmox VE Backup will only backup virtual disks and not mountpoints or storages passed from host, if I understand correctly.


I wondered that. Will be testing.

> I suggest adding a virtual disk of 2TB to the PBS container (and format it with ext4) which can be backed up by the Proxmox VE Backup.


Certainly a possibility.


I also wondered if it was practical to attach an external disk to PBS as 
a Datastore, then detach it. A bit more manual, but doable.


> I would also run the PBS container (with virtual disk) on the cluster instead on separate hardware which is a single point of failure. The local PBS would be then just as reliable as your cluster.


I want to keep the storage separate from the cluster, in that regard the 
local storage is a single point of failure, hence the need for offsite 
storage as well :)


>
> Regarding safeness: I suggest doing a automated disaster recovery every week to make sure it works as expected. Or at least partially, like restoring the PBS from an external drive.


I'll definitely be testing restore options to check that it works.

> Regarding practicality: I would have a remote PBS sync with your local PBS instead of moving physical disks (but you mentioned before that that was not really possible).


Alas :(


Perhaps I could do a backup on site, then physically move it offsite and 
attach it to a offsite PBS server and then sync it remotely - 
incremental backups over the net would be doable.


nb. Our NAS died, hence my increased investigation of this :) Definitely 
want to go with a more open and targeted solution this time, the NAS was 
a good appliance, but inflexible.

Thanks!

-- 
Lindsay