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Proxmox backups

Design

  • From Proxmox, we will be backing up VMs and containers to the TrueNAS that is running in Proxmox.
  • In Proxmox, we mount the alpha/proxmox/snapshots dataset via NFS as alpha-snapshots.
  • Backups from Proxmox are done hourly on the hour (**:00) and copied to alpha-snapshots.
  • In TrueNAS, backups are made from alpha/proxmox/snapshots to Backblaze B2.

Configuration

Mount the target volume

Mount the alpha/proxmox/snapshots dataset via NFS, call it alpha-snapshots.

Make sure to use the dedicated virtual network bridge vmbr1

Create the backup job

Select Datacenter > Backups, create a backup job like so:

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Mind the Notification system and Mode settings.

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The above may change depending on needs, but it's what it's set to at the time of writing.

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The only changed setting here is the bandwidth limit. The only reason it's set is to prevent completely hogging the disk I/O for several minutes. Yes, it takes longer as a result, but at least other services using the pool won't be I/O starved.

Configure vzdump

By default, vzdump creates temporary files in the target location (where the backup will go). As a result, it will try to symlink unprivileged container filesystems onto the NFS volume. This causes permission problems, even when NFS is set to mapall user/group.

To fix this problem, modify /etc/vzdump.conf:

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The only line changed is the tmpdir: one. Set it to /tmp to prevent doing the compression and such on the target volume.