Proxmox Backup

After running Proxmox on my server in my homelab as well as for work for several years now, I have looked into ways to backup the essential files for an easy reinstall if and when needed. Since most Proxmox setups run on bare metal hardware recover is a little more involved than just creating a snapshot or backup and reverting to an earlier point in time.

I often backup the files with rsnapshot, but sadly Debian 11 has dropped rsnapshot from their repo due to the fact that rsnapshot hasn’t been maintained in over two years. I do have a fix for that by following this link here: https://blog.wretchednet.com/post/bringing_rsnapshot_back_to_debian/. Update it appears that rsnapshot is back up and running on Debian 12 stable.

rsync would work but doesn’t provide the same kind of snapshot features as rsnapshot does.

Here are the directories you will need to backup on your Proxmox server.

/var/lib/pve-firewall
/var/lib/pve-manager
/var/lib/pve-cluster
/var/lib/lxc
/var/spool/cron
/root
/boot
/etc/pve
/usr/local/bin

I run rsnapshot every hour using cron and you can use this link to my rsnapshot setup which will show you how to set up the /etc/rsnapshot.conf file found here: https://blog.wretchednet.com/post/rsnapshot/.

Also if you have any scripts run by a user that is housed in their home directory then you might want to backup /home as well.

Lastly

Combine this with my zfssnap script and you will have a bullet proof Proxmox system found here: https://blog.wretchednet.com/post/best-zfs-snapshot-scripts/