Backup solution

N

nelis

Expert Member
Joined
Jul 2, 2006
Messages
2,532
Reaction score
182
Hi there.

don't know if this is in the right section. please move if not.

I have the following situation on backing up some Virtual Machines. I'm not using VMware due to non backup feature in the free version. I'm using Proxmox. So far it has been working great. Now my issue is how do I backup stuff. I'm not talking about how do you backup with the software I'm talking about speed etc etc. Here is my network setup etc etc.

1x server for backups (2x2TB in raid1 for redundcy)
1x server for Proxmox (3-5 Virtual Machines, 250gb for proxmox and 2x2tb raid1 for vms and another 2tb for backups/spare)
Gigabit network. I also bonded the 2 nics on proxmox server.

Now my issue is that it takes forever to backup my Virtual Machines and there is no option to do a incremental or differential backup on the proxmox server and I can't find any third party software. Currently I have Acronis to do my file level backup every night to external and that is working out great. takes me about 1hr to do the backups. I was Thinking of doing a proxmox backup every Friday and just file level backups every day including Friday. I don't do backups over weekends. Another option is to make the backup to that local 2TB that is intended for spare and just get another 2TB for spare.

1 Virtual machine is about 250-300GB rest is like 50-60GB. That's the sizes for the backup cause I tested it. Oh and I don't have to take the machine offline to backup. It will do a snapshot backup. I also tried posting on the Proxmox forums but no one replies.

Thanks
 
Last edited:
1hour to do the backups is nothing...don't understand why you are complaining about that.

Interesting discussion though as I currently use Veeam Backup & Replication to backup VMWare servers and I'm actually moving over to Proxmox because I prefer the idea of manual backups to another server.

Why don't you let Proxmox do the backups directly onto the RAID box using NFS? That was my plan at least.

*****

I stand to be corrected on this one but doesn't Proxmox have it's own built-in incremental or full backups? I've only used the latest version 2.3 so maybe you are on an older build without these features?

I might be wrong though.
 
Never mind I see you are quite right it only allows bull snapshot backups.

And it seems it also only keeps the most recent version, while I had a thought it kept multiple copies if you specified it.

I assume you aren't using Thin Provisioning (or whatever Proxmox calls it) and therefore it backups the full size partitions?
 
nelis said:
Hi there.

don't know if this is in the right section. please move if not.

I have the following situation on backing up some Virtual Machines. I'm not using VMware due to non backup feature in the free version. I'm using Proxmox. So far it has been working great. Now my issue is how do I backup stuff. I'm not talking about how do you backup with the software I'm talking about speed etc etc. Here is my network setup etc etc.

1x server for backups (2x2TB in raid1 for redundcy)
1x server for Proxmox (3-5 Virtual Machines, 250gb for proxmox and 2x2tb raid1 for vms and another 2tb for backups/spare)
Gigabit network. I also bonded the 2 nics on proxmox server.

Now my issue is that it takes forever to backup my Virtual Machines and there is no option to do a incremental or differential backup on the proxmox server and I can't find any third party software. Currently I have Acronis to do my file level backup every night to external and that is working out great. takes me about 1hr to do the backups. I was Thinking of doing a proxmox backup every Friday and just file level backups every day including Friday. I don't do backups over weekends. Another option is to make the backup to that local 2TB that is intended for spare and just get another 2TB for spare.

1 Virtual machine is about 250-300GB rest is like 50-60GB. That's the sizes for the backup cause I tested it. Oh and I don't have to take the machine offline to backup. It will do a snapshot backup. I also tried posting on the Proxmox forums but no one replies.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Would it be appropriate to run your backup software from within the VM's eg. say your vm is runnng Windows Server, install Symantec System Recovery(or Backup software of your choice) and set to take base point full disk image once per week (a live snapshot) and incremental images as necessary.) Main backups go to your spare backup disk on the promox server and can be copied to the other backup server as an offsite location. You backup the proxmox 250GB partition using whatever backup functionality proxmox offers you

I'm mentioning Symantec because that is what I am familiar with. It does disk image backups, will compress the backup image at different compression ratios and you can manage several backed up servers from a management program stored on one PC/server. Of course other backup programs provide similar functionality and may cost less.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Never mind I see you are quite right it only allows bull snapshot backups.

And it seems it also only keeps the most recent version, while I had a thought it kept multiple copies if you specified it.

I assume you aren't using Thin Provisioning (or whatever Proxmox calls it) and therefore it backups the full size partitions?
Click to expand...

It only backups the used space. I can set it to keep multiple copies. but that doesn't mean it will do differential/incremental backups.

that 1hr backups is only for Acronis. I use that for the files inside the operating systems and it works well. this is stored on external every day cause it's not that much data to backup and is only the most critical data
 
Last edited:
Aaah okay, it did sound a little bit too fast.

Personally if the backups can complete overnight I wouldn't worry too much about it, at least that's what I find acceptable in my environment.

How long have you been using Proxmox? Have you found any other issues or differences of concern?
 
backing up, IMO, is copying the "drive" file (in my case, .vdi) somewhere else. How is a copy over a 1gb network slow?
 
SauRoNZA said:
Aaah okay, it did sound a little bit too fast.

Personally if the backups can complete overnight I wouldn't worry too much about it, at least that's what I find acceptable in my environment.

How long have you been using Proxmox? Have you found any other issues or differences of concern?
Click to expand...

nothing so far. In my opinion it works better than Vmware or any other of it's kind and it works on KVM and openvvz containers.


AcidRaZor said:
backing up, IMO, is copying the "drive" file (in my case, .vdi) somewhere else. How is a copy over a 1gb network slow?
Click to expand...

When you have to copy 500+GB in a few hours
 
Last edited:
Hi nelis,

Are you looking for a commercial solution to backup this platform?

We're a Proxmox partner in 3 countries and there are various ways to accomplish what you're after, if you can maybe point me to your Promox forum post?
 
Whats on the servers ?
I only do backups of our VMs once a month or when there was an upgrade or change. Server Settings arnt meant to change.
Our documents are stored on a NetApp Nas device which makes LVM like snapshots, the files are copied to a backup server with removable 1TB sata drives during the night and SQL databases gets dumped via a script to a local drive and then copied again to the removable SATA drive.

That way i have a SQL backup and can use it any time i need to, Files a recoverable using "Previous Versions", and the Servers hardly ever change , when someone deletes a file i dont have to call back the drive.

Backing up the VMs means after hour work but, atleast if something goes horribly wrong i can buy new hardware and "spawn" the whole company up again in a day.
 
Dell's Appasure replay if you need incremental server mirrors ready to be spun up to a new Hypervisor
Veeam also works well for backup

3rd option is an agent based backup app backing up only Data,not the entire VM
 
You can do incremental and differential backups of VM's and the entire Proxmox platform if thats what you want. Remember anything is possible under Linux, the only limiting factors is time (& money).

Hopefully in the near future we'll have the proprietary portions of the software we designed to do this removed so it can be opensourced.

If you're looking to put something together yourself, our software makes use of a combination of DB dumps, LVM snapshots, dbackup and rsync.

One auditing firm has a 10Tb fileserver with around 8Tb populated disk space, spanning about 20 million files. These are backed up daily in around 3 hours. FULL backup, not incremental/differential.... unbelievable you may say? SATA drives cannot even transfer that amount of data in 3hr (yes you are right), but no, it is most definitely possible. If you have the money that is. And I didn't mention that 3 copies of the data is stored daily, not just 1. ;)
 
SBSP said:
Whats on the servers ?
I only do backups of our VMs once a month or when there was an upgrade or change. Server Settings arnt meant to change.
Our documents are stored on a NetApp Nas device which makes LVM like snapshots, the files are copied to a backup server with removable 1TB sata drives during the night and SQL databases gets dumped via a script to a local drive and then copied again to the removable SATA drive.

That way i have a SQL backup and can use it any time i need to, Files a recoverable using "Previous Versions", and the Servers hardly ever change , when someone deletes a file i dont have to call back the drive.

Backing up the VMs means after hour work but, atleast if something goes horribly wrong i can buy new hardware and "spawn" the whole company up again in a day.
Click to expand...

So you say I should just Back it up lets say every Friday? or when there is a change. I think it comes down to me not trusting hardware.
 
Last edited:
Not saying you should do it like that, You need to decide what works for you, and is safe for your company.

I dont have an exchange or domain controller anymore we make use of a DC in the central up in europe also our mail is hosted by Office365, so i dont have to backup AD ect ect like i used to.

But If your server configurations dont often change, i see no reason for backing it up every day.
 
SBSP said:
Not saying you should do it like that, You need to decide what works for you, and is safe for your company.

I dont have an exchange or domain controller anymore we make use of a DC in the central up in europe also our mail is hosted by Office365, so i dont have to backup AD ect ect like i used to.

But If your server configurations dont often change, i see no reason for backing it up every day.
Click to expand...

I think my whole problem is that I'm to scared and to paranoid. But better safe than sorry. I must learn to trust server hardware much more cause they are build to last and raid is build for the ultimate safety.
 
nelis said:
I think my whole problem is that I'm to scared and to paranoid. But better safe than sorry. I must learn to trust server hardware much more cause they are build to last and raid is build for the ultimate safety.
Click to expand...

Depends on the config,it's either configured for speed,efficiency or safety,or a combination ;)
 
Raid5 eek,about as safe as a paper condom :P
 
nelis said:
Why say that. At the moment using a few raid 1 volumes
Click to expand...

RAID1 and 10 is far better than 5

RAID5 is the bastard child of "redundancy". Especially when you look at the amount of time required to rebuild a damaged disk in the array,the bigger the array the longer the time taken to repair and the higher the risk of secondary failures due to parity calculations/reads/writes when repairing
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X