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15 - Backup System

Date: 2026-02-11 Updated: 2026-03-04 Hostname: pve IP address: 192.168.0.109

Overview

Backup strategy - two targets, two types of data:

What Tool Primary location Secondary (Nobara)
LXC/VM backups vzdump /mnt/storage/backup/proxmox/ /mnt/hdd/Backup/proxmox-vms/
Proxmox host OS Restic /mnt/disk1/backup/proxmox-host/ /mnt/hdd/Backup/proxmox-host/

Nobara is not always on - rsync skips gracefully if offline.

1. LXC/VM Backups (vzdump)

Configured in the Proxmox GUI under Datacenter - Backup.

Storage: backup-hdd - path /mnt/storage/backup/proxmox/

Backups are stored as .tar.zst files (vzdump format).

2. Proxmox Host OS Backup (Restic)

Backs up the Proxmox root filesystem (/) to a local restic repository.

Script: /root/backup-proxmox-restic.sh

#!/bin/bash
REPO="/mnt/disk1/backup/proxmox-host"
export RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE="/root/.secrets/restic-password"

restic -r $REPO backup / \
  --exclude /mnt/disk1 \
  --exclude /mnt/disk2 \
  --exclude /mnt/disk3 \
  --exclude /mnt/disk4 \
  --exclude /mnt/storage \
  --exclude /mnt/pve \
  --exclude /var/lib/vz \
  --exclude /tmp \
  --exclude /dev \
  --exclude /proc \
  --exclude /sys \
  --exclude /run \
  --exclude '*.img' \
  --exclude '*.qcow2' \
  --exclude /var/tmp

restic -r $REPO forget \
  --keep-daily 7 \
  --keep-weekly 4 \
  --keep-monthly 3 \
  --prune

restic -r $REPO check

Password stored in /root/.secrets/restic-password (chmod 600).

Cron (on Proxmox host)

0 4 * * 0 /root/backup-proxmox-restic.sh >> /var/log/restic-backup.log 2>&1

Runs Sundays at 04:00.

Check snapshots

RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE=/root/.secrets/restic-password restic -r /mnt/disk1/backup/proxmox-host snapshots

3. Rsync to Nobara PC

After local backups run, a cron job rsyncs both the vzdump files and the restic repo to Nobara.

Script: /root/sync-to-nobara.sh

#!/bin/bash

if mountpoint -q /mnt/pve/nobara-backup; then
  echo "$(date) - Syncing to Nobara..." >> /var/log/nobara-sync.log

  rsync -av --delete /mnt/storage/backup/proxmox/ \
    /mnt/pve/nobara-backup/proxmox-vms/ >> /var/log/nobara-sync.log 2>&1

  rsync -av --delete /mnt/disk1/backup/proxmox-host/ \
    /mnt/pve/nobara-backup/proxmox-host/ >> /var/log/nobara-sync.log 2>&1

  echo "$(date) - Sync done" >> /var/log/nobara-sync.log
else
  echo "$(date) - NFS not mounted, skipping" >> /var/log/nobara-sync.log
fi

Cron (on Proxmox host)

0 11,19 * * 0 /root/sync-to-nobara.sh

Runs Sundays at 11:00 and 19:00. If Nobara is offline, it logs and skips.

NFS mount

See 15_NFS-Setup_Documentation.md for mount configuration.

4. Weekly Schedule (Sundays)

Time Job
03:00 SnapRAID sync
04:00 Restic host OS backup
11:00 Rsync to Nobara
19:00 Rsync to Nobara (second attempt, in case Nobara was offline at 11:00)

5. Monitoring

# Restic backup log
tail -f /var/log/restic-backup.log

# Nobara sync log
tail -f /var/log/nobara-sync.log

# List LXC backups
ls -lh /mnt/storage/backup/proxmox/dump/

# Check NFS mount
mountpoint /mnt/pve/nobara-backup

5. Disk Layout

Proxmox

nvme0n1p3 (237GB LVM)
├─ pve-root (60GB) -> /
├─ pve-swap (8GB)
└─ pve-data (150GB) -> VM/LXC disk storage

sda1 (5.5TB) -> /mnt/disk1
sdb1 (5.5TB) -> /mnt/disk2
sdc1 (931GB) -> /mnt/disk3
sdd1 (1.8TB) -> /mnt/disk4
/mnt/storage -> MergerFS pool (backup-hdd lives here)

Nobara PC

/mnt/hdd/Backup (3.7TB) -> NFS export, rsync target