Re: [RFC cluster/common/container/docs/installer/manager 00/21] add rudimentary host backup mechanism

[Nicolas Frey <n.frey@proxmox.com>]

Hi, thanks for the patches!

I tested the changes on the PVE side and the installer (i.e. disaster
recovery) on a VM with zfs on root:

PVE side:

works well, using it is quite intuitive. I didn't run into any issues.
I had some thoughts of how it could be extended:

* allow the user to add additional paths that they might want backed
up too, e.g. custom scripts outside of `/etc`
* allow local backups, which would make it possible to plug it into
own backup scripts/solutions

Both of these are probably beyond the scope of "disaster recovery" and
may also be out of scope for the initial series, but I just wanted to
mention them.

The installer:

I had some difficulties with testing the installer changes, mainly
because it depended on proxmox-backup-client, which isn't in our ISO
build. after getting DNS to work so I could pull in packages via apt,
I was able to install the package.

I was also a bit puzzled by how the restore functioned (I went through
a whole TUI installer dialog until realizing I'd have to pass '-r' to
initiate the process, though that wouldn't be an issue if I didn't
have to start the installer in debug mode and chose a "restore from
backup" option.

Also, manually needing to fill in all the PBS information in the
installer was a bit annoying, though I reckon that would be solved by
the auto-installer.

Perhaps also making it possible to restore from a local backup (not
from PBS) might make sense? It would plug in nicely with the second
point for PVE above.

I otherwise didn't run into any issues on the auto installer, I
restored the VMs (which's config was backed up by the host backup) via
PBS and the single node was running pretty much as it was before.

---

The series looks quite good already!

On 8/28/26 3:31 PM, Shannon Sterz wrote:
> This is still very early stages and rough around the edges. I am sending this
> now, because the rough mechanism seems to work well enough to start gathering
> some input.
[snip]