As businesses increasingly rely on digital tools and virtualized environments, ensuring the safety of critical data has never been more important. Proxmox, a powerful open-source virtualization platform, has gained popularity for its flexibility and ease of use. However, just like any system, it’s vulnerable to data loss through accidental deletions, hardware failures, or malicious attacks.
Before we jump into the how-to, it’s important to understand why backups are so critical. Proxmox is a versatile platform that allows you to run and manage multiple virtual machines on a single physical server. These virtual machines can be used to host websites, run applications, or handle important internal tasks for your business.
Proxmox offers several backup options, so you can choose the method that works best for your needs. Let’s take a closer look at the three primary types of backups you can implement:
A full backup is just what it sounds like: it copies everything from your VM, including the operating system, applications, and data. This is the safest option, as it provides a complete snapshot of your system at a particular point in time.
Incremental backups are more efficient. Instead of copying everything, they only back up the changes made since the last backup. This is much faster and uses less storage.
Differential backups work similarly to incremental backups, but instead of backing up the changes since the last incremental backup, they back up everything that has changed since the last full backup. While it takes up more space than an incremental backup, it’s faster to restore.