Proxmox Backup Plan

The MSP360 Backup Agent now extends its powerful data protection capabilities to Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) with a new beta release. This integration allows IT administrators and managed service providers to seamlessly back up and restore Proxmox virtual machines using the familiar, robust workflow of Management Console.

A VM Server license is required to perform Proxmox virtual machine backup.

The Management Console provides flexible options for selecting VMs within a Proxmox host:

• All existing virtual machines.
• All currently running virtual machines.
• A custom set of pre-selected virtual machines.

Beta version limitations for backups:

• In the initial beta release, all disks attached to a selected VM are included in the backup. Granular disk selection is a planned feature for a future update.
• Synthetic full backup functionality requires Backup Agent for Windows version 8.6.5 and higher.
• Only one Proxmox backup or restore job can run at a time; concurrent execution is not supported.

Features and specifications are based on the initial beta release and are subject to change as the product develops.

Network Configuration

On the Windows computer hosting the agent, inbound traffic on TCP port 8007 must be allowed through the local firewall. If this port is blocked when a backup plan runs for the first time, the operation will fail with error code 1962. The MSP360 Backup GUI will promptly detect this and provide a solution in the error message to quickly enable the required port.

No configuration is required on the Proxmox host itself. All backup and restore settings are managed entirely within the MSP360 Backup Agent interface,

It is strongly recommended to use a backup datastore located on physically separate storage from the host's VM disks.

Proxmox User Permissions for Backup

To perform backup and restore operations, the backup service requires a Proxmox user account with specific permissions. It is a security best practice to create a dedicated user for backup purposes rather than using the root account.

The recommended set of privileges can be granted by assigning the following roles to the backup user at the root (/) level of the Proxmox datacenter:

Role	Purpose
PVEVMAdmin	Grants administrative permissions for virtual machines, necessary for snapshot creation and VM configuration access
PVESDNUser	Provides read-only access to the Software-Defined Network (SDN) configuration, required for proper operation
PVEDatastoreAdmin	Allows reading datastore contents and allocating space, which is essential for backup and restore tasks

For details on how to add permissions, refer to the following KB article.

Create a Backup Plan

To create a new Proxmox backup plan:

1. Open Backup > Computers in the Management Console.
2. Open the current list of backup plans by either clicking on the name of any computer, or the Configure icon in the Backup Plan Status column.
3. To create a new Proxmox Backup Plan, click on “Add New Plan” then click on Proxmox backup plan

The Backup Wizard starts. Rename the plan, if needed for better usability.

Where to Back up

Select a target backup storage for the backup plan, set the retention policy for the plan. Also you can enable and configure the advanced options .

The Use a hybrid backup destination scheme option will be available soon.

To select a backup destination:

1. Click Select destination to select a storage account. If no storage accounts are available, create a new one. Refer to Add New Storage Account to learn how to do it.

2. Now you can configure the retention policy for the plan. By default, the retention period is set to 3 months.

Retention Policy for Advanced Schedule, GFS, and Object Lock for GFS backups

Specify the retention period for the backup plan.

GFS Settings

To apply the GFS retention policy, enable the Archive Full Backups, Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) feature, then specify the GFS retention settings. GFS will require the Advanced schedule on the Schedule step and is incompatible with Forever Forward Incremental (simple schedule).

Object Lock for GFS Backups

Object Lock for GFS backups is linked to the GFS retention policy. If the Object Lock for GFS backups is applied along with GFS settings, full backups that are subject to the GFS retention policy become immutable for the GFS retention period.

Select the Prevent backups created according to GFS policy from deletion checkbox, then confirm the use of this feature.

Retention Policy for Simple Schedule

If you want to use the simple schedule, you should set a retention period and do not enable GFS settings.

For the Simple schedule, the Retention period value defines how long restore points are kept. Restore points with an expired retention period are merged into a full backup. (With Forever Forward Incremental, only one full backup is kept on the backup storage). If your storage has a minimum retention period, the creation of a new full backup will be postponed to avoid early deletion fees.

Advanced Options

By default advanced options are skipped for the backup plan. You should enable them, if necessary (not recommended).

On the Where to back up step you can specify the advanced options for the backup plan, exclude unnecessary contents.

To exclude specific files and folders, select the Exclude files/folders checkbox, then specify the path to the object to exclude. Note that the disk labels must be capitalized (Example: C:\trash).

• Synthetic Full backup. Select this option to enable Synthetic Full for selected backup storage. Consider, in case you enable this option for long-term backup storage, this can result in increased storage costs. Refer to your cloud storage provider documentation to check the prices of in-cloud copy creation for selected storage classes.
• Use S3 Transfer Acceleration (available only for Amazon S3). Use this option to accelerate file transfer for an extra fee. The target bucket must have this feature enabled. Select this check box if you want to use the data transfer acceleration service provided by Amazon. To learn more, refer to the Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration documentation.
• Ignore bad sectors. Select this check box to bypass any damaged/corrupted sectors on backup source disks. Even in case the volume with bad sectors is restored, these sectors will become empty sectors, and you will not be able to read any files that were allocated in these sectors.
• Disable VSS, use direct access to NTFS volume. Select this check box to disable Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). This option may be required when a disk is not used for writing operations and does not have sufficient space to create a VSS snapshot. Basically, this applies to system volumes

• Use system VSS provider. Select this check box to use the system default VSS provider. It is recommended to use it in case of the presence of any third-party VSS providers installed that may interfere with the proper processing of VSS snapshots made by MSP360 (CloudBerry) Backup

• Prefetch block count (0 without prefetch. Specify the maximum block number stored in memory for each disk volume (cache). Consider, by default you will see the recommended optimal value in this field. It is not recommended to change it. You can only use this field for testing purposes, if this is recommended by technical support.

A block is a minimum unit of information that can be processed at a time when preparing a backup.

When you need to perform a backup over a disk containing several terabytes of data, you can speed up the backup processing by increasing the block size (see below).

Additional Advanced Options for Amazon S3

If your backup destination is Amazon S3, the following custom settings are available in this step.

• Use S3 Transfer Acceleration. Use this option to accelerate file transfer for an extra fee. The target bucket must have this feature enabled
• Select the S3 storage class for the backup plan:
  • Standard
  • Intelligent-Tiering
  • Standard-IA
  • One Zone-IA
  • Glacier Instant Retrieval
  • Glacier Flexible Retrieval
  • Glacier Deep Archive

Using different storage classes for different backup purposes helps you to optimize the storage costs.

Additional Advanced Options for Microsoft Azure

If your backup storage destination is Microsoft Azure, and you have the General Purpose v2 Azure account, select the required storage class (access tier).

The following options are available:

• Hot tier. An online tier optimized for storing data that is accessed or modified frequently. The hot tier has the highest storage costs, but the lowest access costs.
• Cool tier. An online tier optimized for storing data that is infrequently accessed or modified. Data in the cool tier should be stored for a minimum of 30 days. The cool tier has lower storage costs and higher access costs compared to the hot tier.
• Cold tier. An online tier optimized for storing data that is rarely accessed or modified, but still requires fast retrieval. Data in the cold tier should be stored for a minimum of 90 days. The cold tier has lower storage costs and higher access costs compared to the cool tier.
• Archive tier. An offline tier optimized for storing data that is rarely accessed, and that has flexible latency requirements, on the order of hours. Data in the archive tier should be stored for a minimum of 180 days.

To learn more about the difference between Azure storage tiers, refer to the Azure Blob Storage - Hot, cool, cold, and archive storage tiers article at docs.microsoft.com.

Click Next.

Connect to the Host Server

Enter Proxmox Host Server access information. You can select whether to remember the password for future use.

Select Virtual Machines

Next, select the virtual machines you wish to back up.

• Back up all virtual machines: will back up all VMs regardless of current state. This is recommended only for small environments.
• Back up only running virtual machines: Only backs up VMs currently in “Running” status.
• Back up selected virtual machines: Allows you to back up a group of VMs by selecting them from the list below. This allows for greater control of mixed status VMs and for larger environments where it is beneficial to split the backup into multiple plans.

Encryption Options

After you have selected which VMs to back up, the next step is to set the encryption options. Although the compression option is not exposed in the Proxmox backup plan user interface, Proxmox backups are compressed automatically.

You can protect your backup by encrypting its contents. Managed Backup supports AES encryption with key sizes of 128, 192, and 256 bits. A larger key size provides stronger encryption but may increase the time required for processing your backup. For more details on AES encryption, refer to the Advanced Encryption Standard.

If you choose to save your backup plan configuration to the destination storage, be aware that the encryption password is not stored in the configuration file for security reasons. Ensure that you save this password securely, as it will be required to restore the backup's contents.

Backup Consistency Check

Enable or skip the full consistency check. A mandatory consistency check will be completed with every backup plan run regardless of this setting.

Click Next.

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Schedule Options

Specify the backup plan schedule settings.

The following options are available:

• Select the Simple option to apply the Forever Forward Incremental (FFI) schedule.
• Select the Advanced option to apply the recurring schedule and, if necessary, use Grandfather-Father-Son and Object Lock (Immutability).
• Select the No schedule, run manually option to run the backup plan manually. Retention policy will not work for this option.

For more guidelines on schedule selection, refer to the following article.

Simple Schedule

Select the Simple (Forever Forward) option to use the Forever Forward Incremental (FFI). This schedule offers one full backup followed by a limited number of incrementals. Once the limit is exceeded, a new full backup is created using in-cloud copying (synthetic full backup.

Once you select this option, the predefined schedule will appear. You can edit this schedule, if necessary. You can select the Daily or Monthly schedule type, depending on how often the incremental backups will be performed.

Use the Additional Settings to configure the following:

• First backup start date
• Stop condition for the long backup
• Overdue alert condition
• Missed backup handling

Advanced Schedule

Select the Advanced option to set up a flexible, recurring schedule with generations. Every generation contains one full backup followed by incrementals.

Once you select this option, the predefined schedule for full and incremental backup will appear. You can edit this schedule, if necessary.

The advanced schedule allows you to configure a flexible backup plan according to your requirements. To modify the schedule, use the edit icon next to the selected schedule. If needed, you can disable the incremental backup schedule to run only full backups.

You can select the Daily or Monthly schedule type, depending on how often the incremental backups will be performed.

Use the Additional Settings to configure the following:

• First backup start date
• Stop condition for the long backup
• Overdue alert condition
• Missed backup handling

Click Next.

Pre / Post Actions (optional)

Specify pre and post-actions for your backup plan. Usually, these are scripts that perform particular jobs before or after your data is backed up. The following settings are available:

• To specify the action that will be performed before the backup plan starts, select the Pre-backup action checkbox.
• Specify the path to the script to be run as a pre-backup action.
• Specify the conditions of pre-action run:
  • Select the Do not run the backup plan if the pre-backup action fails option if you do not want the backup plan to be launched if the pre-backup action fails.
  • Select the Run the backup plan if the pre-backup action fails option if you want the backup plan to launch regardless of the pre-backup action result.
• To specify the action that will be performed after the backup is completed, select the Post-backup action checkbox.
  • Select the Execute the post-backup action only if the backup plan completes successfully option if you want to run it only if the backup was executed without any errors or warnings.
  • Select the Execute the post-backup action regardless of the backup plan result option if you want the post-action to be launched regardless of the backup termination results.
• To chain the backup plan with another plan, select Backup chain checkbox, then select the backup or restore plan name in the drop-down menu.
  • Select the Run the selected plan if this backup plan completes with success option if you want to run the specified plan only if the backup plan was executed without any errors or warnings.
  • Select the Run the selected plan regardless of this backup plan completion result option if you want the chained backup plan to be launched regardless of the backup termination results. Select the mode for the current chained backup plan:
  • Force full backup. Full backup will be forced for the chained backup plan.
  • Use settings of the current backup plan. Chained backup plan will be run as full or incremental, according to this backup plan run.

Click Next.

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Notifications

Specify notification settings for backup plan results. You can use the company notification settings or customize them as needed. You can specify the required recipients and customize the notifications on different backup plan results:

• Success
• Warning
• Failed

You can configure a notification threshold for Managed Backup alerts, so that notifications are sent only after a specified number of consecutive plan failures

If you select to customize notifications, select the recipients for different events.

• Select Send notifications to user account... if you want to notify the associated user about the backup process.
• Select If the backup plan fails or completes with warnings option if you want to receive the notification message in case of the backup plan failure
• Select In all cases option if you want the entry to be put in Windows Event Log in any case.

Click the Next, then click Save to finish the wizard.

Complete Backup Plan Creation

The final step of the wizard will confirm that the Backup Plan was successfully created. If you select the “Run backup now” box, the application will initiate it immediately upon exiting the wizard, otherwise it will run at the next scheduled time.