Proxmox Backup Server as a plugin

This article shows you how to use the Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) as a plugin on a system with Proxmox VE (PVE).

Use case

The main use case is to install the PBS on top of PVE in order to perform a disaster recovery. The following images show this scenario in more detail:

• 
  You have a PVE cluster, from which you back up all your VMs & CT to the PBS, which was installed as a plugin.
• 
  In the event that the cluster fails completely. This allows you to restore the VMs & CT whose backups are on the PBS to the underlying PVE.
• 
  After the process has been completed, you can use your VMs & CTs to their full extent again.

Please note the resources of the Proxmox Backup Server, which will normally have less hardware resource capacity than an entire cluster.

Due to the limited capacities, it may well be that not all virtual environments can be restored and started.

Post-installation on a Debian-based Linux system

If you want to post-install the Proxmox Backup Server on a PVE host, you can skip this point and start directly with the point ‘’‘’Post-installation on a PVE node‘’‘’. Otherwise, start by downloading the GPG file:

To do this, use the following URL and download the .gpg file via the CLI using wget.

wget https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg

This will load the repositories of Proxmox, which should look like this:

root@pve-virt-05:~# wget https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg 
--2024-09-12 15:05:00-- https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg
Resolving enterprise.proxmox.com (enterprise.proxmox.com)... 185.219.221.167, 2a0b:7140:5:100::167
Connection to enterprise.proxmox.com (enterprise.proxmox.com)|185.219.221.167|:443... established.
HTTP request sent, waiting for response... 200 OK
Length: 1187 (1.2K) [application/octet-stream]
Save in: ‘/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg’
/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-book 100%[===========================================================================================>] 1.16K --.-KB/s in 0s      
2024-09-12 15:05:00 (34.1 MB/s) - ‘/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg’ saved [1187/1187]
root@pve-virt-05:~#

Checking the checksums with sha512sum

It is then important to check the checksums of the gpg file to ensure an error-free installation.

The tools sha512sum and md5sum are used for this, both tools should already be installed on your system, you can find this out with the following commands:

 root@pve-virt-05:~# sha512sum --version
 root@pve-virt-05:~# md5sum --version

To check the checksums, execute the following two commands:

Firstly, check the checksum with ‘’‘sha512sum’‘’, for this you need this command:

sha512sum /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg

Eventual output:

 root@pve-virt-05:~# sha512sum /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg
 7da6fe34168adc6e479327ba517796d4702fa2f8b4f0a9833f5ea6e6b48f6507a6da403a274fe201595edc86a84463d50383d07f64bdde2e3658108db7d6dc87 /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg

Required output:

 7da6fe34168adc6e479327ba517796d4702fa2f8b4f0a9833f5ea6e6b48f6507a6da403a274fe201595edc86a84463d50383d07f64bdde2e3658108db7d6dc87 /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg

Checking the checksums with md5sum

Now carry out the procedure described above again, but using the tool ‘’‘’md5sum‘’‘’":

 md5sum /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg

Eventual output:

 root@pve-virt-05:~# md5sum /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg
 41558dc019ef90bd0f6067644a51cf5b /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg

Required output:

 41558dc019ef90bd0f6067644a51cf5b /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-release-bookworm.gpg

If both checksums match the required output, follow the next steps and configure the repositories for the backup server.

Post-installation on a PVE node

Open the file path /etc/apt/sources.list with nano:

 root@pve-virt-05:~#nano /etc/apt/sources.list

You should now see this file:

 GNU nano 5.4 /etc/apt/sources.list *                                                                         
 deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian bookworm main contrib
 
 deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates main contrib
 
 # Security updates
 deb http://security.debian.org bookworm-security main contrib
 
 deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bookworm pve-no-subscription
 

This file may differ slightly from yours if, for example, the Enterprise Repository has been activated instead of the No-Subscription Repository.

Add the following lines to the bottom of this file to add the Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) repository:

# PBS pbs-no-subscription repository provided by proxmox.com,
# NOT recommended for production use
deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pbs bookworm pbs-no-subscription

You can then open the file with ‘’‘[CTRL]’‘’' + ‘’‘’[X]‘’‘ and a subsequent confirmation with “”’‘[Y]’‘’ and another confirmation with ‘’‘’[Enter]‘’'.

‘’‘Note’‘’': You can also change this repository to the Enterprise repository at a later date if you have subscriptions.

Then execute the following commands to update the package list and install the Proxmox backup server as a plugin.

 root@pve-virt-05:~# apt update
 root@pve-virt-05:~# apt install proxmox-backup-server

Now you can call up and configure the installed PBS with the IP address of the server and port 8007 in a browser.

Author: Niklas Pauli Niklas Pauli works in the product management team at Thomas-Krenn. He completed his general university entrance qualification at Freyung High School and then his training as an IT specialist for system integration at Thomas-Krenn.AG. After completing his training, he continued to work in the areas of Proxmox VE incl. Ceph, backup (Proxmox, Veeam, SEP). He is also a regular writer for the Thomas-Krenn-Wiki.