PBS remotes, sync, off-site, S3, tape

Why this matters in production

Backups that live on the same failure domain as the production cluster do not protect against site loss. Off-site replication (sync to a remote PBS, S3, or tape) is the answer.

Remotes

A remote is another PBS instance that this PBS can sync to/from. Add it:

proxmox-backup-manager remote create pbs-remote --host pbs-remote.lab.example.com --user sync@pbs --fingerprint 'xx:xx:xx:...'

The fingerprint is the remote PBS’s TLS certificate fingerprint. Get it from the remote’s web UI or via:

proxmox-backup-manager cert info | grep Fingerprint

Sync jobs

Sync a local datastore to a remote datastore:

proxmox-backup-manager sync-job create main pbs-main-remote --remote pbs-remote --schedule 'hourly' --remove-vanished

Options:

S3 datastores

PBS 4 supports S3-compatible object storage as a datastore backend:

proxmox-backup-manager datastore create s3-cold s3:bucket-name --s3-endpoint https://s3.example.com --s3-region us-east-1 --s3-access-key <id> --s3-secret-key <secret>

S3 datastores are ideal for:

• Long-term archival.
• Compliance retention (with object-lock/WORM).
• Off-site without managing a second PBS.

Tape integration

PBS supports tape as a backup target:

• LTO-5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 drives via proxmox-tape.
• Tape changers (autoloaders) supported.
• WORM tapes for compliance.

GUI: Administration → Tape. CLI:

proxmox-tape pool create weekly-pool --name weekly --drive <drive-name> --media 'LTO8' --retention 90

Tape backup schedules and jobs are managed through the PBS GUI. Tape is best for:

• Compliance-grade long-term retention.
• Air-gapped backups (tape offline).
• Very large backups (multi-TB per tape).

Choosing the right strategy

Production considerations

Common mistakes

• Not testing restore from off-site.
• Bandwidth-unlimited sync that saturates the WAN.
• Confusing S3 backup storage with primary storage.

Key takeaways

• Sync to remote PBS for off-site.
• S3 datastores for archive and compliance.
• Tape for air-gap and long-term retention.
• Test restore from each off-site target.

Knowledge check