Table of Contents

• Working Features
• Known issues
  • S3 Performance / Considerations
  • Sizes shown in PVE frontend
• Usage
• Quickstart
  • minio
  • PVE configuration
  • Proxmox backup client
• Running with Docker
• Notes

WIP!! Use as follows

Note: Garbage collector is experimental, use with extreme caution

Working Features

The following features are currently implemented:

• Configure proxy in PVE and use it for both CT and VM backups (full and incremental)
• Restore functionality (VM restore, mount, map)
• Basic PVE UI integration: adding notes, setting the protection flag, removing backups, showing configuration.
• File backup/restore/mount via proxmox-backup-client (full and incremental)
• Using it as remote store in PBS to pull backups via proxmox-backup-manager pull

Known issues

S3 Restore Performance / Considerations

Both the proxmox VM and file backup client will split the backups into many small chunks, S3 is not known to perform well upon reading many small files.

The bigger your bucket gets/your backups are, the more likely you will see performance issues during restore.

Also think about cost peaks for object read operations. The proxmox backup clients will request required chunks sequentially, there is currently no way to optimize this in the proxy.

You should consider twice if you want to make the S3 backend your primary backup storage. For local S3 instances with S3 compatible API (ceph, minio) the performance depends largely on your setup.

As with proxmox 8.2, a feature called "Backup fleecing" was introduced, See release notes which prevents VM lockup / slow down in case of slow backup storage, which is more likely to happen with hosted S3 over slow network connections.

Sizes shown in PVE frontend

The backup size is currently not correctly shown

Usage

Usage of ./pmoxs3backuproxy:
  -bind string
        PBS Protocol bind address, recommended 127.0.0.1:8007, use :8007 for all (default "127.0.0.1:8007")
  -cert string
        Server SSL certificate file (default "server.crt")
  -debug
        Debug logging
  -endpoint string
        S3 Endpoint without https/http , host:port
  -key string
        Server SSL key file (default "server.key")
  -lookuptype string
        Bucket lookup type: auto,dns,path (default: "auto")
  -usessl
        Enable SSL connection to the endpoint, for use with cloud S3 providers

Usage of ./garbagecollector:
  -accesskey string
        S3 Access Key ID
  -bucket string
        Bucket to perform garbage collection on
  -debug
        Debug logging
  -endpoint string
        S3 Endpoint without https/http , host:port
  -lookuptype string
        Bucket lookup type: auto,dns,path (default: "auto")
  -retention uint
        Number of days to keep backups for (default 60)
  -secretkey string
        S3 Secret Key, discouraged , use a file if possible
  -secretkeyfile string
        S3 Secret Key File
  -usessl
        Use SSL for endpoint connection: default: false

Quickstart

minio

Start minio server (either on the PVE system or on a remote system), specify the listening IP via --address

minio server ~/minio --address 127.0.0.1:9000
mc alias set 'myminio' 'http://127.0.0.1:9000' 'minioadmin' 'minioadmin'

Create the target bucket used as datastore:

mc mb myminio/backups

Create an API access key for the minio admin account:

mc admin user svcacct add myminio minioadmin
Access Key: 431EM4CTA0OP810W6FER
Secret Key: RIa82lyl6ZrEYVtvwaMgh2JFlOISENiGQT+Lv0IE
Expiration: no-expiry

Start the proxy via:

pmoxs3backuproxy -endpoint 127.0.0.1:9000

PVE configuration

The on PVE add proxmox backup server storage

127.0.0.1:8007

Use

55:BC:29:4B:BA:B6:A1:03:42:A9:D8:51:14:9D:BD:00:D2:2A:9C:A1:B8:4A:85:E1:AF:B2:0C:48:40:D6:CC:A4

as fingerprint, if you intend to bind on public network with potential MITM, please regenerate server certificate !!

Use the created access_key@pbs for username, and secret key as password, and bucket as datastore

Proxmox backup client

Use proxmox backup client by setting the repository and password accordingly:

 export PBS_PASSWORD=<secret>
 proxmox-backup-client backup root.pxar:/etc --repository <access_key>@pbs@127.0.0.1:<bucket>

Running with Docker

Add the following to your docker-compose.yml, add/update your -endpoint, then run docker compose up -d. The service will be accessible at localhost:8007.

name: pmoxs3backuproxy
services:
  pmoxs3backuproxy:
    image: ghcr.io/tizbac/pmoxs3backuproxy:latest
    command: -bind 127.0.0.1:8007 -endpoint 127.0.0.1:9000
    container_name: pmoxs3backuproxy
    hostname: pmoxs3backuproxy
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    ports:
      - '8007:8007'

For increased security, you can add the following security parameters without affecting container function:

    user: '65532:65532'
    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges:true
    cap_drop:
      - ALL

Notes

Garbage collector process ( scheduled with crontab ) must absolutely run on same machine as the proxy for locking to work!

Garbage collector will also check for integrity ( only the presence of all referenced chunks ), if a backup is found to be broken, it will not be deleted and retention will be honored, but it will be marked corrupted, so next backup from PVE will be non incremental and will recreate missing chunk if needed. Corrupted backup will not appear in PVE backup list