What to Expect from Proxmox Backup Server Beta

On July 10, 2020, the Austrian company Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH provided a public beta version of a new backup solution.

We have already covered how to use regular backup methods in Proxmox VE and run incremental backup using a third-party solution - Veeam® Backup & Replication™. Now, with the advent of Proxmox Backup Server (PBS), the backup process should become more convenient and easier.


Distributed by PBS under license GNU AGPL3developed Free Software Foundation (Free Software Foundation). This will allow you to easily use and modify the software to suit your needs.

Installing PBS is almost the same as the standard Proxmox VE installation process. In the same way, we set the FQDN, network settings and other required data. After the installation is complete, you can restart the server and go to the web interface using a link like:

https://<IP-address or hostname>:8007

The main purpose of PBS is to perform backups of virtual machines, containers, and physical hosts. An appropriate RESTful API is provided to perform these operations. Three main types of backup are supported:

• vm - copying a virtual machine;
• ct - copying the container;
• host - copying the host (real or virtual machine).

Structurally, a virtual machine backup is a set of archives. Each disk drive and virtual machine configuration file is packed into a separate archive. This approach allows you to speed up the process of partial recovery (for example, you need to extract only a separate directory from the backup), since there is no need to scan the entire archive.

In addition to the usual format img for storing bulk data and images of virtual machines, a format has appeared pxar (Proxmox File Archive Format), designed to store a file archive. It is designed to provide high performance for the resource-intensive data deduplication process.

If you look at a typical set of files inside a snapshot, then along with the file .pxar you can still find the files catalog.pcat1 и index.json. The first one stores a list of all files inside the backup and is designed to quickly find the necessary data. The second, in addition to the list, stores the size and checksum of each file and is designed to check the consistency.

The server is traditionally managed using a web interface and/or command line utilities. Detailed descriptions of the CLI commands are given in the corresponding documentation. The web interface is concise and familiar to anyone who has ever used Proxmox VE.

In PBS, you can configure synchronization tasks for local and remote data stores, support for ZFS, AES-256 encryption on the client side, and other useful options. Judging by the roadmap, it will soon be possible to import existing backups, a host with Proxmox VE or Proxmox Mail Gateway entirely.

Also, with the help of PBS, you can organize a backup of any Debian-based host by installing the client part. Add repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian buster main contrib
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib

# security updates
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib

Update the software list:

apt-get update

Installing the client:

apt-get install proxmox-backup-client

Support for other Linux distributions will follow in the future.

You can “feel” the beta version of PBS right now, there is a ready-made image on the official website. The Proxmox forum also has a corresponding branch discussions. source code also available to all comers.

Summing up. The first public beta version of PBS is already showing a set of very useful features and deserves the closest attention. We hope that the future release will not disappoint us.

Only registered users can participate in the survey. Sign in, you are welcome.

Are you planning to try Proxmox Backup Server?

• 87,9%Yes51

• 12,1%No7

58 users voted. 7 users abstained.

Source: habr.com