Proxmox

The Proxmox integration allows Plakar Control Plane to back up and restore the virtual machines and containers running on a Proxmox VE node. Rather than reading disks directly, it drives Proxmox’s own vzdump tool to produce a backup archive, then ingests that archive into a Kloset store with encryption and deduplication applied. Restores push an archive back to a node and hand it to the native Proxmox restore tools, qmrestore for virtual machines and pct restore for containers.

Because the integration relies on the tooling shipped with Proxmox, the consistency of a backup is determined by vzdump and the backup mode it runs with. See the Proxmox backup documentation for details.

Inventory Management

Currently no managed inventory has the capability of discovering Proxmox resources. You must configure a self-managed inventory before adding a Proxmox resource.

Adding Proxmox as a resource

When using a self-managed inventory, register the resource with Hypervisor as the class and Proxmox as the subclass. For the endpoint, use the hostname or IP address of the Proxmox node. See resources documentation for more information on how to set up resources on a self-managed inventory.

A single resource represents one Proxmox node. Which workloads on that node are backed up is decided by the source app configuration, not by the resource itself.

Backup flow 

flowchart TD
  subgraph Proxmox["Proxmox node"]
    Vzdump["vzdump"]
    Workloads["Virtual machines & containers"]
    Dump["Dump directory"]
  end

  subgraph Plakar["Plakar Control Plane"]
    Source["Proxmox
Source app"]
    Backup["Backup process
Encrypt & deduplicate"]
  end

  Store["Kloset Store"]

  Source -->|"SSH: run vzdump"| Vzdump
  Vzdump --> Workloads
  Vzdump -->|"write archive"| Dump
  Dump -->|"archive transfer"| Source
  Source --> Backup
  Backup --> Store

Restore flow 

flowchart TD
  Store["Kloset Store"]

  subgraph Plakar["Plakar Control Plane"]
    Destination["Proxmox
Destination app"]
    Restore["Restore process"]
  end

  subgraph Proxmox["Proxmox node"]
    Dump["Dump directory"]
    Tools["qmrestore / pct restore"]
    VM["Restored virtual machine or container"]
  end

  Store --> Restore
  Destination --> Restore
  Restore -->|"archive transfer"| Dump
  Destination -->|"SSH: run restore"| Tools
  Dump --> Tools
  Tools --> VM

Shared configuration

The following settings are available when configuring both source and destination apps.

  • Mode: Required. The execution mode for Proxmox operations. In local mode the operation runs directly on the Proxmox node alongside vzdump. In remote mode it runs on a separate machine and connects to the node over SSH, so a single deployment can back up an entire fleet of hypervisors. The Conn settings below only apply in remote mode.
  • Conn Method: The SSH connection method used when Mode is remote. It selects which of the credentials below is used to authenticate.
  • Conn Username: The Proxmox SSH username used in remote mode.
  • Conn Password: The password used when Conn Method is set to password authentication.
  • Conn Identity File: The path to the private key used when Conn Method is set to identity authentication.
  • Dump Dir: The directory on the node used to create and read vzdump archives. Defaults to /var/lib/vz/dump. This directory needs enough free space to hold the archive of the largest workload being backed up or restored.
  • Backup Mode: The vzdump backup behaviour, which determines how running workloads are handled while the archive is created. Defaults to snapshot.
  • Backup Compression: The compression used by vzdump when writing the archive. Defaults to 0.
  • Cleanup: Deletes the temporary vzdump files from the dump directory after an operation completes. Leaving it disabled keeps the archive on the node, which consumes space but avoids regenerating it.
  • Node: The Proxmox node name. Optional, and only needed to target a specific node in a cluster.

Source configuration

The following extra settings are available when configuring a source app. They select which workloads are backed up.

  • VMID: Backs up a single virtual machine or container by ID.
  • Pool: Backs up every virtual machine and container belonging to the given pool.
  • All: Backs up everything on the node. This is not recommended, since the set of workloads is then implicit and grows silently as the node changes.

Destination configuration

The following extra settings are available when configuring a destination app.

  • Newid: The VMID the workload is restored as. Use it to restore alongside an existing machine rather than over it.
  • Storage: The Proxmox storage the restored disks are written to.
  • Pool: The pool the restored workload is assigned to.
  • Force VM Restore: Stops a running virtual machine or container before the restore when necessary. Without it, a restore that targets a running workload cannot proceed.
  • Start On Restore: Starts the virtual machine or container once the restore completes successfully.

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