Schedule Backup Job with PBS

This guide goes over scheduling backup job with PBS server. Proxmox Virtual Environment can run it's own jobs, but for best optimization, using deducation and verify jobs, having PBS is good idea. Also, it provides redundancy if pve goes down.

Using Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) over Proxmox VE (PVE) native backups offers several significant advantages, particularly for environments requiring efficient, secure, and reliable backup management. The primary benefit is that PBS performs incremental backups, transferring only changed data since the last backup, which drastically reduces backup time and network bandwidth usage compared to PVE’s full backup approach that copies entire VM or container images each time. This incremental method, combined with advanced deduplication, ensures that duplicate data across multiple VMs or containers is stored only once, leading to substantial space savings and allowing for more frequent backups without excessive storage consumption.

Setting up Datastore in Proxmox Backup Server

1. Login to PBS
   
2. Under Datastore click Create Datastore
   1. Name: Choose name to call it
   2. Backup Path: Select the path to folder directory on the machine. If not using volume from machine check out this article to use NAS storage via NFS
      
   3. Under Prune option this is personal preference, but deduplication really lowers the amount of space needed, so keeping more backups is not bad decision.
3. Once done click Add

When the datastore is added, clicking on datastore will give you info, and also ability to adjust Prune and CG Jobs. Also, under Verify Jobs it's good idea to add Verify Job for checking that backup isn't corrupted and that will work when needed.

4. Under Prune & CG Jobs make sure CG Job is set to daily. You can adjust Prune job here as well
5. Under Verify Job click Add and schedule Verify to run Daily and Re-Verify to run every 30 days

It is optional to create a namespace. Storing your backups in separate namespaces is very useful if you ever plan on planning to use your PBS to store backups from multiple Proxmox hosts, or even other Linux server.

5. Under Content click Add Namespace

   1. Parent Namespace: This would be folder in which this subfolder will live, usually root
   2. Namespace Name: name of the folder where backups will live

Adding PBS Database on PVE instance

1. Select Datacenter > Storage > Add > Proxmox Backup Server
2. Set the parameters to match the information below:
   1. ID: the name you’d like to use (I use pbs-backups)
   2. Server: IP address of Proxmox Backup Server
   3. Username: bservice@pbs (use user made specifically for pbs to pve connection).
   4. Password: Password of the user
   5. Datastore: Name of the datastore you created in PBS
   6. Namespace: if you have namespace add it here
   7. Fingerprint: hash from PBS server. Paste the fingerprint copied from the PBS dashboard 
   8. Add Database

Add a Backup Job in PVE

1. Login back to Proxmox Virtual Environment
2. Select Datacenter then Backup, then select Add
   1. Under General
      1. Select PBS Storage
      2. Schedule put a time that works best
      3. Selection Mode: best to do All
      4. Mode: Stapshot is the most reliable for daily backup. Stop can be run once a week
   2. Retention
      1. This is configured on PBS side
3. Click OK to schedule the backup