Availability of Proxmox Backup Server V.2.3

Enterprise software developer Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH, the company behind Proxmox Backup Server announces enhancements to its open-source server backup solution, which are available.

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The enterprise solution for backing up and restoring VMs, containers, and physical hosts supports incremental backups, de-dupe, Zstandard compression, and authenticated encryption. This version brings enhancements for the web interface, tape backup, as well as countless general client and backend improvements.

Highlights in Proxmox Backup Server 2.3

• PItis based on Debian 11.5 (Bullseye), uses the Linux kernel 5.15 as stable default and kernel 5.19 as opt-in, and includes ZFS 2.1.6. Features such as fine-grained access control, data integrity verification, and the possibility to create off-site backups through remote sync and tape backups help planning a ransomware defense strategy and ensure that critical data stays protected.

• Pruning namespaces: Pruning lets specify which backup snapshots you want to keep, in a systematic manner. With this version, the prune job system has been expanded to take namespaces into account: Up until now, it has only been possible to add a single-schedule per datastore; now pruning can also be limited to certain namespaces. With the built-in prune simulator users can explore the effect of different retention options with various backup schedules. Namespaces in Backup Server (introduced in v.2.2) help organize backups from multiple sites (local and remote) hierarchically, while keeping the required storage space minimal through de-dupe. With the new fine-grained control in Backup Server 2.3, businesses can determine when and how deeply a particular namespace is pruned.

• Support for sending metrics to InfluxDB: V 2.3 can gather and send critical stats, relevant for measuring performance, to InfluxDB, an open-source database management system for time series. Such metrics are, for example, CPU load averages and IOwait %, NIC traffic statistics, filesystem usage or IO for datastores.

• Tape backup improvements: The inventory command, which can be used for DR, can optionally restore the catalogs of backups stored on tape, potentially saving critical time in a worst case scenario.

• Offline Mirror: The Proxmox Offline Mirror tool allows to keep the firm’s Backup Server nodes – with restricted or without access to the public internet – up-to-date and running. With the ‘proxmox-offline-mirror’ utility, it’s possible to manage a local APT mirror for all package updates for Proxmox and Debian projects. From that mirror, users can create an external medium (USB flash drive or a local network share), and can then update their policy-restricted or air-gapped systems. For subscribers with a Premium or Standard subscription level, the company offers an offline subscription key for its product portfolio.

The whole software stack of Backup Server is written in Rust – a modern, fast, and memory-efficient language. Currently, the backup solution integrates into Proxmox Virtual Environment – users just need to add the storage for the Backup Server as a new storage backup target to the virtualization platform.

Availability

• Proxmox Backup Server is free and open-source software, published under the GNU AGPL, v3. The downloadable ISO image can be installed on bare-metal using the installation wizard. The centrally managed software stack Backup Server 2.3 is available for download.

• Distribution upgrades from older versions of Backup Server are possible via APT. It is also possible to install Backup Server on top of Debian.

• For enterprise users, the company offers a subscription-based support model, which provides access to the tested Enterprise Repository, with regular updates via the web interface, as well as technical support on a subscription basis. Prices start at €449/server, including unlimited backup storage and unlimited backup-clients.