To ensure a reliable backup strategy I’m using two Proxmox Backup Servers (PBS) on 2 different locations: The garage in my house where most of the infrastructure is, and a garden house on the same property. The garden house is my “Off-site” backup. In addition I also backup Home Assistant configuration and photos to Google drive.
I have 4 copies of everything: Live data on proxmox server (nvme, ssd and HDD) and PBS datastores on 3 HDD external drives, two of which are “off-site”. Unfortunately it would be too expensive to introduce an additional “storage type” like e.g. tape drive. To make up for this, I store copies of important data (in addition to photos) on Google drive.
The following takes place on the 2 Proxmox servers:
Main Proxmox Server
Nightly backup of Virtual machines and LXC’s to the PBS Main datastore at 01:00. The PBS-LXC is not backed up (that would cause an error). Home Assistant is backing up its configuration to a Samba-drive, and also to Google drive. The samba drive is running in an LXC, and is backed up every night with the other LXC’s and VM’s. The PBS is pruning and garbage collecting regularly. Home Assistant is starting the Off-site server at 04:00 every night using Wake On LAN. The PBS-LXC is backed up to the Off-site PBS.
Proxmox servers and Backup servers are sending status messages to a Gotify instance that has the ESPDeerAdapter plugin installed. This plugin forwards Proxmox status messages to Home Assistant. Automations are triggered by various status and error messages. A message indication the last Off-site SYNC-job is finished will cause Home Assistant to power off the Off-site Proxmox server.
Off-site Proxmox server
The server is started by Home Assistant at 04:00. The Off-site PBS has 2 datastores: One on the 4TB HDD that also serves as the Proxmox boot disk, and another one on a USB-connected 4TB HDD. The Off-site PBS-LXC is backed up to the Main PBS Datastore. The Main PBS datastore is synchronised with the Off-site HDD datastore, and then this datastore is synchronised with the USB-HDD datastore. This gives 3 identical datastores, 2 of which are “off-site”.
Pruning and garbage collection is run every saturday at 02:00 in the same way as nightly backup jobs.
