Whether on-premise or in the cloud: externalize your Proxmox backups

Whether you run Proxmox VE on-premise or in the cloud, keeping your backups on the same infrastructure as your production servers is a risk. In this article, we explain why externalizing your backups is essential.

The 3-2-1 backup rule

The industry-standard 3-2-1 backup rule states:

• 3 copies of your data
• 2 different storage media
• 1 copy off-site

Many Proxmox administrators have their local backups (the “2” copies) but miss the critical off-site component.

Risks of local-only backups

Hardware failure

If your storage array fails and your backups are on the same system, you lose everything — production data and backups alike.

Ransomware

Modern ransomware targets backup files specifically. If your backups are accessible from the same network as your production servers, they are at risk.

Natural disasters

Fire, flood, or other physical disasters can destroy your entire on-site infrastructure, including backup storage.

Human error

Accidental deletion of a datastore or misconfigured storage can wipe out your backups alongside your VMs.

How Cloud-PBS solves this

Cloud-PBS provides the off-site component of the 3-2-1 rule:

1. Physical separation — Your backups are in a different datacenter
2. Network isolation — Your Cloud-PBS instance is not directly accessible from your LAN
3. Client-side encryption — Even in the worst case, your data remains unreadable
4. Managed infrastructure — We ensure the backup storage is always available

Getting started

Externalizing your backups with Cloud-PBS takes just 5 minutes. Start your free trial and add your Cloud-PBS instance as a remote datastore in Proxmox VE.