I‘ve got 2 Machines with Proxmox on both installed. One hosts my data and media and runs Services like Jellyfin, NAS,… The other one is a Mini-PC that hosts my Services like Adguard, Home Assistant,…

Whats the best way to Backup the data and configs of those 2 machines? Installing Proxmox Backup Server on each and store the Backups on a seperate HDD? Or would it be better if a move all the services to a single machine and use the second only for backups?

thank you!

  • hamsda@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    4 hours ago

    How does it work if my ssd dies, where proxmox boot

    If you only have 1 disk on your server (no RAID), you will have to

    • buy a disk
    • install in server
    • reinstall Proxmox VE
    • Install Proxmox BS
    • have a regular backup on some other disk (e.g. USB HDD) to restore other VMs from

    and the lvm for the containers is located on?

    Are you talking about containers (lxc, docker) or the VM disks? You need a backup for VM disks anyway (Proxmox BS).

    If you’re talking about containers, I do not know how to backup those. I do use docker containers but they’re all inside VMs. I like to seperate things via VMs, as a rogue container taking down it’s VM (or having other negative effects on its host) is less of a headache than a rogue container taking down the whole hypervisor because it’s running directly on the that.

    For comparison, this is my disk setup for my server (my old PC):

    # lsblk
nvme0n1     259:0    0 465.8G  0 disk
nvme1n1     259:1    0 465.8G  0 disk
sda           8:0    0   3.6T  0 disk
sdb           8:16   0   3.6T  0 disk
sdc           8:32   0   3.6T  0 disk

# zpool list
NAME        SIZE  ALLOC   FREE  CKPOINT  EXPANDSZ   FRAG    CAP  DEDUP    HEALTH  ALTROOT
data_raid  10.9T  2.40T  8.51T        -         -    26%    21%  1.00x    ONLINE  -
rpool       460G  7.31G   453G        -         -     8%     1%  1.00x    ONLINE  -

    The 2 NVME-disks are used in a ZFS mirror (rpool in zpool list above) and store the Proxmox OS. The 3 SATA SSDs (see sd* in lsblk above) are housing all VM data in a ZFS RAID-Z1 called data_raid. With this hardware- and RAID-setup, one disk of each zpool could die right now and all I’d have to do is pay the currently horrendous hardware-prices and replace it. No data-loss or downtime until at least 2 disks of a single zpool die together.

    All hardware dies at some point. Preperation is key.

    • doctorflynt@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      My Mainboard only supports a single nvme-drive. thats why i store the os and the data of my vm/lxc on it. everything else are good old hdd. is it possible to restore this drive, if i install pbs as a lxc on this very drive?

      sorry, i tried to read through some guids already and the more i read the more im confused /(

      • hamsda@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        1 hour ago

        You should not be able to restore the whole drive, like you would restore a VM. This is because you would first need to have Proxmox VE already running to restore the drive which runs Proxmox VE.

        If your NVME drive dies, you would have to do what I outlined above:

        • get new NVME drive, install in server
        • install Proxmox VE manually
        • install Proxmox BS manually (either lxc container or VM)
        • give Proxmox BS access to backups on external HDD
        • restore whatever you backed up

        Though, to reiterate, I do not know anything about lxc containers.

        I did go through the Proxmox VE backup settings on my server, but I could not find a way to backup lxc containers, only VMs. So maybe Proxmox VE does not support backing up lxc containers? Or maybe it just does not show any lxc container backup option because I do not run any lxc containers?

        I did find this github about Proxmox VE and LXC containers, but I didn’t test it and it only has 1 star, so I’d be wary.

        As a tipp: Even if your motherboard only supports 1 NVME drive, you might still be able to use multiple. You could buy a PCIe card with M.2 NVME slots, if you have any unused PCIe slots on your mainboard. With this, you should still be able to have a RAID setup.

        • doctorflynt@feddit.orgOPEnglish
          1·
          37 minutes ago

          thx for that write up. seems i didnt understand you correctly the first time (english is not my native language). i already used all pci-slots with sata extensions and a nic. its just a mini atx board with a n100 cpu, so my options are limited. i could mirror the disk to a sata ssd though.