Hello, my fellow virtualization experts. Last year, we witnessed a significant rise in the popularity of a virtualization platform that didn’t have a considerable presence in production clusters but was immensely popular in home labs. You all know what I’m referring to: Proxmox VE. Many of us are contemplating it as our next virtualization platform. And with this transition, a myriad of questions arise. One of the most pressing ones is: What about backups? How will I be doing them, and what will I use? For many years, the primary and only option was the Proxmox Backup Server – a native solution developed by Proxmox; until last year, Veeam added support for Proxmox. I believe you can see where I am going. Yes, we have an interesting comparison ahead of us. So, let’s go and start it.
What is Proxmox VE?
Let me start the discussion with a very quick introduction to the Proxmox platform. I know, I know. The entire Internet is flooded with articles about it. I will only repeat some of the information you can easily find online; I will provide you with a quick reminder.
The Proxmox Virtual Environment, an open-source virtualization platform, stands out with its ability to run standard virtual machines using KVM hypervisor and containers using Linux Containers. It also offers a built-in storage solution called Ceph and includes network functionality. These features can be used to build a fully functional and highly available cluster. And the best part? All these capabilities are accessible through an integrated web-based user interface, making it a comprehensive and user-friendly solution.
But the thing is, it doesn’t matter how good the product is; you should always have a backup. And I talk about it directly and figuratively. We are all human; we all make mistakes. Also, do not forget that we work with hardware that has a lifespan and can break. So, we need a solid backup for all the data in the production and the ability to restore the damaged or lost portion quickly. That is the purpose of a backup solution like Veeam or Proxmox Backup Server. They are designed to provide you with a solid user experience and a set of features that will allow you to protect the production data and quickly restore it in case of an accident.
I already see you being tired of all this introduction. So, let’s end this bravado and do the damn comparison.
We will do it simply: First, we will introduce both products and their features and then compare them.
What can Veeam offer?
So, let’s start with what Veeam has to offer because, as a company, its products need no introduction. We all know them very well. Veeam is the leader in the backup market. But let’s not focus on already known information and see what they can offer to Proxmox users.
I will not be diving into Veeam deeply since everyone knows this solution and what it looks like. Instead, I will focus on what Proxmox users will get in the first production-ready version of Veeam Backup for Proxmox VE. This initial release will provide the following set of features:
- Standard and VeeamZip VM backup jobs.
- Backup copy jobs to different repositories/locations.
- Standard and cross-platform VM restore.
- Instant recovery of Proxmox VMs to VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV.
- Application item and file-level restore.
- Export and mount disks of backed-up Proxmox VMs to VMDK, VHD, and VHDX formats.
- Immutable backups.
- Veeam Bitlooker.
Now, let’s discuss how Veeam Backup for Proxmox VE can be integrated:
You would need a Windows-based physical or virtual server to deploy Veeam Backup&Replication software. The next step is to deploy Veeam workers on each Proxmox host. These workers will handle the transfer of VM data from the Proxmox VE host to the backup repository.
If you have an existing Veeam virtual server running on a different hypervisor, it would need to be imported into Proxmox only if you want it running directly on Proxmox.
Let’s finish introducing Veeam’s offering here and move on to the second contender.”
What can Proxmox offer?
We are following up on our discussion with Proxmox Back Server (PBS). It is native backup software developed and designed for Proxmox VE. I will introduce PBS in more detail than Veeam since a small fraction of the IT community is familiar with this product and the Proxmox products. The PBS is based on a minimal Debian GNU/Linux distribution.
It can be deployed in multiple ways:
- Installation on a separate Debian-based server: The server could be physical or virtual. In this case, you would need to install all the required packages manually on the server.
- Installation using PBS ISO: The ISO contains the Debian OS installation files and all the necessary PBS packages. You can also use it to deploy a VM or perform bare-metal installation on the physical server.
- Installation on Proxmox VE: You can install the PBS on one of the Proxmox cluster hosts by manually installing the required packages. However, Proxmox and I do not recommend this method. The Backup Server should always be separated from the production cluster so that, in case of an accident with the cluster, the backups will be easily accessible and protected.
Now that we know how to deploy PBS, let’s discuss the features. I will divide the PBS feature into a couple of categories:
Backups:
- Incremental & Deduplication: PBS has different deduplication configurations. Depending on the data type, it can be split into fixed or variable-sized chunks. PBS deduplication is done on the repository level.
- Compression: PBS uses ZSTD (ZSTD1) compression algorithm. It is applied at the repository level, just like deduplication. In theory, this approach is superior to the per-job deduplication and compression used by Veeam because the global deduplication has a broader “scope of view”, potentially resulting in greater savings. However, in practice, it is recommended to run both products side by side to obtain accurate savings figures specific to your environment.
Architecture:
- The Proxmox backup solution uses a client-server model. This allows clustered and independent hosts to be connected to the same PBS server. Additionally, PBS can pull or synchronize datastores to other locations for redundancy. This is an efficient method since only changes in the previous sync gets transferred.
Data Integrity & Security:
- Encryption: PBS encrypts data at the client side. Additionally, you can increase the security by generating a master key to manage the encryption keys.
- Checksum algorithm: PBS uses a built-in SHA-256 checksum algorithm to ensure the accuracy and consistency of your data.
- User role & group permission: PBS uses several authentication realms: Linux PAM for system users, OpenID Connect for authentication through OpenID, and a Proxmox Backup authentication server for handling permissions and data ownership.
- Ransomware protection: Protection can be achieved in multiple ways. You can use ZFS-based storage with encryption enabled. Also, you can use separate API tokens with minimal permissions for each Promox host so they can only do the backups without further modifications.
Quick restore:
- Additionally, to quickly restore the data, you can do it granularly, meaning you can restore only a portion. PBS has a snapshot catalog for navigation.
Centralized Management:
- Web-based user interface: PBS has an integrated, web-based UI to manage the PBS configuration and the backup data.
- Command-line interface (CLI): For advanced users who are used to the comfort of the Unix shell, Proxmox provides a command-line interface to accomplish special or very advanced tasks.
- Rest API: Proxmox Backup Server uses a RESTful API. It uses JSON as the primary data format, and the whole API is formally defined using JSON Schema. This enables fast and easy integration for 3rd party management tools.
Proxmox VE Integration:
- PBS is fully integrated into the Proxmox VE platform, meaning you can manage everything from a single UI.
Tape Backup:
- PBS supports tapes starting from LTO-5 generation with flexible retention policies.
- PBS has its custom barcode generator for a more flexible backup configuration.
Great. That’s all about the PBS and its feature set, so now we can compare both products and see where they shine over their “competitor.”
PBS vs. Veeam B&R
Both companies offer free versions. Proxmox PBS is completely unrestricted in its free edition, whereas, as of the time of writing, the free version of Veeam could protect up to 10 “instances” (i.e., virtual machines). I will do my best to highlight all the differences and make a fair comparison.
I’ve decided to use categories to describe the differences rather than creating a simple table with all the information without commenting on it. So, let’s go ahead and start our comparison.
Deployment and configuration
This is the first category I chose to start with. Here, it depends on whether you have Veeam.
If you do, you can continue to work with it. If it is a physical server, you need to update VBR software to the version 12.2 to support the Veeam Backup for Proxmox VE plugin. If it is a Veeam VM, you must convert it to Proxmox format and proceed with configuration and licensing. Obviously, conversion requires time and software. It is an additional effort but not a complex one. This task could be done with the use of the StarWind V2V converter. Hear me out; I am not trying to do any advertisement here because it is entirely free software. I am just trying to show you that you can efficiently perform that task.
Now, if you are installing Veeam from scratch, you need to have a server or a VM with Windows (and only Windows) OS pre-installed. Also, in both cases, you would need to deploy a Veeam worker on each Proxmox VE host for Hot Add mode. However, for Network Block Device (NBD) mode, a single worker is sufficient for any number of Proxmox VE nodes. It can be done from the Veeam console, but it is an additional step of the entire deployment and configuration process.
With PBS, you have the same two deployment options: a physical server or a VM.
If you already have a Debian-based VM or server, running a couple of simple commands to install all the required packages and configure the solution is a matter. You can also download a pre-compilated ISO with everything and deploy it on the physical server or a VM. After the deployment of PBS is completed, you need to create a backup repository and connect it to Proxmox VE hosts. However, the configuration of some repositories will require running shell commands that will bring a certain level of complexity for inexperienced users.
We don’t know which is better if we compare these two products based on their deployment methods and configurations. PBS will be a more straightforward solution from a pure deployment standpoint because you can use a pre-compilated ISO with all the required components. Veeam will require you to deploy and configure Windows first before deploying Veeam. From a configuration standpoint, Veeam will be a more intuitive and easier solution for inexperienced users to deploy. However, if you follow the Proxmox configuration guide, you will be successful. A basic knowledge of Linux operating systems will be an advantage and make your life easier. At the end of the day, both of them are pretty easy to deploy and configure using the configuration guides.
Backup
Now, let’s discuss the backup capabilities of both solutions. Both solutions can back up the Proxmox VE VMs. With both solutions, you can create scheduled backup jobs and edit them to change the backup window and frequency. Also, both can do incremental backups and so-called “Quick backups.” This option allows you to back up a VM without creating the scheduled backup job. In addition, Veeam can do file-level backups. PBS doesn’t have this option.
VB for PVE has a slight advantage over PBS in this category, meaning that most users will not use those additional features.
Restore
We are following with restore capabilities. Here, we have an almost identical situation as with backup. Both solutions can restore VMs and perform an instant recovery. Also, both can do partial restores of files/folders/archives from the backup. However, Veeam can restore application items such as Microsoft AD, Exchange, SharePoint, Oracle Database, and SQL Server.
If you are moving from another virtualization platform to Proxmox VE and already have Veeam, you can use it to restore your VMs from existing backups to Proxmox VE hosts.
So, apart from the cross-platform restore, Veeam has an advantage only by having the application items restore feature. However, that advantage is noticeable since most companies use these services.
Deduplication and Compression
Both solutions have deduplication and compression. However, each solution has a different approach.
PBS does the deduplication and compression on the repository level. It uses the Zstandard or ZSTD (ZSTD1) compression algorithm, which is claimed to be highly effective—more effective than Veeam’s LZ4 standard. However, Veeam can utilize ZSTD3 or ZSTD9 algorithms.
Veeam, on the other hand, applies deduplication and compression on each backup job separately. It also provides more flexibility by offering multiple options for the compression ratio. Additionally, Veeam has a so-called “Storage optimization” feature that allows you to optimize the backup job by defining the minimum data block size to process VMs.
We cannot say that one solution is better than another because everything will depend on the use case.
Data protection
In this category, we discuss all sorts of data protection, including data redundancy, ransomware protection, encryption, etc.
Let’s start with data redundancy. Veaam archives this by creating copies of backups and putting them in different repositories. PBS does it more efficiently by synchronizing the entire repository with another one. This means you create a single synchronization job to copy all the data to another repository, whereas in Veeam, you need to create a copy job for every backup you have.
Now, let’s talk about encryption. Both solutions have encryption, and it works on the client side, meaning it is encrypted before sending it to the repository. Additionally, you can configure repository-level encryption with Veeam solution.
Let’s continue with ransomware protection. PBS can use ZFS-based storage with encryption to protect data. Also, you can create custom API tokens for each Proxmox VE host and a cluster to limit their access to the backup repository and its modifications.
In Veeam, ransomware protection is achieved by using the Linux Hardened Repository (LHR) or Cloud Object Storage. LHR has an immutability policy: when you add a hardened repository, you specify the period, while backup files must be immutable. Also, it has “Single-use credentials:” credentials that are used only once to deploy Veeam Data Mover, or transport service, while adding the Linux server to the backup infrastructure. These credentials are not stored in the backup infrastructure.
Additionally, both solutions can make a copy of the data on an external repository or do a tape backup.
So, as we can see, both solutions have high data protection with different features available, with Veeam having more options for protected repositories.
Licensing and associated costs
Phew. We finished the technical comparison and can now talk about licensing and cost. Let’s start with PBS because it is very straightforward.
PBS is a free product you can download and deploy without paying a penny with one “but:” This version has access to only community repositories that don’t have the most recent and stable updates, security packages, etc. Proxmox also does not recommend using the community repository in production. To have access to them, you need to pay for the subscription. All available support levels and prices can be found at this link.
It is a different story with Veeam. It has more complex licensing and pricing models. The license cost will be based on the edition you choose and the size of the environment that will be backed up. All the helpful information about the support plans and estimated pricing you can find by following these links:
Veeam customer support policy.
Use cases
Now, we can discuss where each product can find its place. Based on all the information we discussed, the PBS will fit small and medium-sized environments where the essential backup and restore capabilities will be more than enough. In other words, PBS will be fit for those looking for a solid solution without needing deep customization and optimization of backups and working only with Proxmox clusters since PBS is available only on Proxmox. Also, the most you can get from PBS is being a European-based company.
On the other hand, Veeam is suitable for environments of any size. Obviously, the bigger the environment, the higher the price of the solution. However, it is more flexible and the only option if you do backups of MS365, FileShares, separate Physical servers, etc.
Conclusion
Today, we discussed a very interesting and important topic. We learned about the two solid backup options on the Proxmox VE platform. I hope the comparison was helpful for you and that you have the first thoughts about what solution you will use. So, for all of you who are switching to the Proxmox VE platform and looking for a very cost-effective solution, I highly encourage you to try the Proxmox Backup Server. You would have a solid solution with everything you need to cover the majority of backup tasks with the minimum associated costs. This will give you the required data protection at the start so you can figure out what to do next. For those who already have Veeam or are looking for a solution with solid worldwide support, multiple backup repository options, multiple virtualization platform support options, and good optimization, Veeam B&R is your option. However, trying PBS to see if you may switch to it someday is also beneficial.
