Chapter 16. Backup and Restore

Backups are a requirement for any sensible IT deployment, and Proxmox VE provides a fully integrated solution, using the capabilities of each storage and each guest system type. This allows the system administrator to fine tune via the mode option between consistency of the backups and downtime of the guest system.

Proxmox VE backups are always full backups - containing the VM/CT configuration and all data. Backups can be started via the GUI or via the vzdump command line tool.

Backup Storage. Before a backup can run, a backup storage must be defined. Refer to the Storage documentation on how to add a storage. A backup storage must be a file level storage, as backups are stored as regular files. In most situations, using a NFS server is a good way to store backups. You can save those backups later to a tape drive, for off-site archiving.

Scheduled Backup. Backup jobs can be scheduled so that they are executed automatically on specific days and times, for selectable nodes and guest systems. Configuration of scheduled backups is done at the Datacenter level in the GUI, which will generate a job entry in /etc/pve/jobs.cfg, which will in turn be parsed and executed by the pvescheduler daemon. These jobs use the calendar events Section D.1, “Schedule Format” for defining the schedule.