Proxmox VE is considered a suitable virtualization solution for small and medium-sized organizations with limited budgets. However, the open-source nature of Proxmox has its advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, the solution is flexible and can be adapted to any infrastructure requirements. On the other, users might face some compatibility, performance and security issues if the solution is not configured properly.
The data on Prxomox virtual machines can be critical to an organization’s operations and revenue. That same data can also be subject to compliance regulations. Losing this data can lead to financial losses and even threaten an organization’s existence which is why it is important to implement a Proxmox backup solution and ensure VM data protection.
NAKIVO’s Proxmox backup helps users set up reliable backup and recovery of their VMs and environments. Below we review the challenges with organizing Proxmox backup in detail. We also explore the solution by NAKIVO, highlighting key features, benefits and integration capabilities.
Proxmox Backup: Challenges Explained
You can use Proxmox Backup Server on Proxmox VE. PBS is the native solution for backup and recovery Proxmox virtual machines. This snapshot-based functionality can provide data protection, replication and recovery capabilities to a certain extent with CLI and web-based interface management, data deduplication and encryption. However, there can be issues that force users to look for alternatives.
Reliability
The native solution by Proxmox can have reliability issues: sometimes snapshots may not work as expected. Moreover, virtual machines can be blocked or corrupted after the scheduled backup workflows are completed. Users also experience issues with incremental backups: the system can still perform full VM backup despite the incremental backup settings being correctly configured.
Complexity
Normally, you can solve the majority of the issues after completing the proper configuration. However, getting familiar with Proxmox to configure backups as an expert can take time. The official website has an advanced user guide and knowledge base, but organizations may want to dedicate their IT department’s time and effort to other tasks. Additionally, issues arising after update releases may not have topical guides and require studying the developer’s forum to solve, which can take even more time and effort.
Cost
Proxmox offers paid support to help you handle the solution’s management and troubleshooting quicker. The price of such services is another issue to consider: total bills may require a noticeable part of an organization’s budget, regardless of that organization’s size and infrastructure complexity. The price of training courses that organizations can purchase from Proxmox increases the cost of building an efficient virtualized environment.
If you find that the native Proxmox backup solution is not the right fit in terms of reliability and cost, you may need to consider a simplified and efficient alternative. In that case, you can look into Proxmox VE backup solution by NAKIVO.
NAKIVO’s Proxmox Backup Solution
NAKIVO provides reliable and fast agent-based backup to protect Proxmox VM data. After integrating this solution into your environment, you can:
- Run automated, fast app-aware Proxmox incremental backups by schedule and on demand.
- Control and manage data protection workflows via a centralized web-based interface.
- Create tiered backups using onsite, offsite, public cloud, NAS or tape storage.
- Enhance ransomware resilience with backup immutability.
- Set role-based access control (RBAC), two-factor authentication (2FA) and data encryption to prevent unauthorized access to backups.
- Recover all VM data or individual files to achieve tight RTO and RPO objectives.
NAKIVO has top rates among the existing customers due to fast operation, reliability and qualified customer support. Leading brands such as Honda, Cisco and Siemens trust NAKIVO to protect their data. Affordability is another advantage: prices for subscription licenses start at $2.50 per workload/month; for perpetual licenses, the price begins at $58 per VM. Interestingly, NAKIVO has made their Proxmox backup solution available free of charge until the end of 2024.
Benefits of the New Solution
The Proxmox backup solution by NAKIVO enables you to automate data protection workflows in your virtual environment. It is easy to deploy and configure NAKIVO Backup & Replication, and the interface is user-friendly. You can start the first Proxmox scheduled backup workflow in minutes after installing the solution.
In addition, NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides higher performance and optimized storage space consumption. Create reliable incremental Proxmox auto backups, control network bandwidth to balance production and backup loads, schedule data protection workloads and deduplicate data copies to cut backup windows. Flexibility, resource optimization and reduced storage space utilization can help you further optimize costs to additionally reduce the TCO of the system.
Initial Configuration
NAKIVO Backup & Replication can be integrated with Proxmox VE and uses the agent-based approach to back up and recover data. For starters, you can deploy the solution on Linux Ubuntu that is running on a Proxmox VM and use the onboard backup repository.
To see installation details, check NAKIVO’s user guide. You can then use local, shared and cloud datastores to organize a tiered storage system for enhanced reliability. For example, you can have two local datastores and two shared ones configured on TrueNAS.
Then, you need to add Proxmox VMs to the solution’s inventory. Keep in mind that you should add Proxmox VMs as physical machines. The agent-based backup approach supposes installing a Transporter component in each virtual machine you want to protect. Therefore, you add Proxmox VMs using the same method for physical Windows or Linux workloads.
After specifying the name, type, credentials and ports for the added VM, you can proceed with creating a backup job. Check this guide to see more details about Proxmox backup and recovery options with NAKIVO.
Conclusion
NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides agent-based, incremental and app-aware Proxmox backup. You can configure multiple security options to optimize data protection performance. At the same time, NAKIVO simplifies both backup and recovery configuration and processes. With up to 2X faster workflows, 49% lower cost than that of other vendors, and 24/7 customer support, NAKIVO Backup & Replication is definitely an efficient choice to protect Proxmox VMs.
