Backing up VM's and LXC's offsite using proxmox backup server

Computer Hardware & Server Infrastructure Builds
1

Hello everyone,

I hope you’re all doing well. I’m planning to set up two Proxmox servers—one at my home and another at a friend’s place. I have a mix of VMs and a few LXC containers running on both nodes.

Server 1:

  • 256GB Samsung NVMe (OS and some LXC containers)
  • 500GB Kingston SATA SSD (for additional VMs and LXC containers)

Server 2:

  • Two 256GB SSDs in ZFS (handling all tasks)

My plan is to set up a Proxmox Backup Server as a VM on each node. Each server will back up the other, meaning Server 1 will store backups of Server 2, and vice versa.

I’m still figuring out the best way to implement this and make both servers accessible remotely. To access services within VMs, I currently use Cloudflare Tunnel.

Could someone suggest the best methods for setting up backups between these servers? My data needs are relatively light, as I primarily host websites and applications like Invoice Ninja, OpenVPN, WordPress, Odoo, and a CRM.

If one server goes down, having a backup and a way to restore it to the same server after reinstalling the OS would be critical for me. In the future, I plan to add a 2TB SSD configured with ZFS or Btrfs, so having an offsite backup is important.

Additionally, I’d appreciate any advice on how I could also copy these backups to the cloud for extra peace of mind.

Thanks in advance, and please feel free to correct me if I’m missing something!

2

If you have pfsense at each site a Wireguard VPN between the sites would be good, if not you could look at overlay networks.

Netbird is nice if you want a self hosted overlay network.

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3

I really do not have the pfsense deployed at my home. But I use tailscale to connect few of my servers from remote. Also I do not want to open public ports, Is there a way I can do the same thing will tailscale ? If I will self host the netbird I need to open ports publicly.

4

Yes, Tailscale works fine without you having to open ports.

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5

Hey tom, thanks for the help. I am the dumbest guy to ask this question. Even the solutions was lying around me. Also can you suggest me something by which I can also push this backups to cloud ?

6

I have not used Proxmox backups so I am not really sure what to suggest there.

7

I’m trying to implement something similar myself, however just a slightly different configuration. I’ve been told it’s not totally recommended to install the PBS server on the same node you’re trying to back up. The reason for this is that if the node goes down – you’d have to reinstall both promox and PBS virtualized within Proxmox to restore – I’m guessing however this isn’t your setup. The PBS server backing up Server #1 would be located on Server #2 and the PBS backing up Server #2 would be located on Server #1.

PBS works best when it has access to a block device – so you will probably have to decide whether to setup PBS giving it a zvol as a block device where it would store it’s backups, or you would nfs mount a directory on the host within PBS. I’ve been told not to use nfs – however I’m trying to confirm if this is indeed true if the nfs mount is actually on the same machine and not actually a remote machine. Wireguard/Tailscale/Headscale – they are all implemented slightly differently however they all run wireguard essentially.

In terms of backing up to a cloud – I think that might be difficult since I think you’re asking for a “file” based backup method rather than a block backup method? Please clarify.

In terms of networking - I have my sites connected through a site to site VPN through two virtualized pfSense installations.