Restoring proxmox backup to another node became very easy with recent proxmox updates.

Bobcares provides solutions for every query as part of our Server management services.

Let’s take a look at how our Support team backups and then restore a Proxmox VM to another Proxmox Node.

How to Backup and Restore Proxmox to Another Node?

To create a proxmox virtual machine backup and move it to a remove server, we can use the proxmox web GUI or command line interface.

Enable our disk to store backups

Normally, our hard disc can be used for:

• Container Template
• Container
• Iso Image
• Disk Image

That means we won’t be able to save our virtual machine backups to our hard drive for the time being. As a result, we must ensure that our hard disc can accommodate the VZDump Backup File.

Please follow the guidelines below:

1. Firstly, choose Data Center from the menu.
2. To see a list of server storage mediums, go to storage.
3. Then, select the backup storage medium from the list.
4. After we’ve made our selection, click Edit.
5. The screen will then display a pop-up box. All other options are highlighted blue in the ‘Content’ drop down menu. Then, to save our changes, make sure the VZDump Backup file is also highlighted in blue.

Our backup storage medium is now ready to be used.

Create Backup

We can create backups in two ways: through the GUI and through the command line. We’ll start with the command line version because it’s the easiest.

Create backup from command line
Using ssh, connect to our server and run the following command:

Change to the directory where backups are kept.
cd /var/lib/vz/dump

create a backup
vzdump 0001
This will create a backup for the virtual machine 0001.

The backup will then take some time to complete, with progress displayed on the terminal.

Create backup from Proxmox GUI

1. 1. From the left sidebar, choose the virtual machine.
   2. Select Backup.
   3. Then select “Backup Now”.
   4. Select none from the compression drop-down menu; selecting compression will compress the backup over the CPU, but the backup size will be small.
   5. Finally, click Backup.

The backup will then be stored in the server’s /var/lib/vz/dump folder.

Move backup file via scp

Once the backup is complete, simply scp it to the remote server; the backup file will be named something like”vzdump-qemu-0001-2022_05_06-10_10_10.vma.”

Use the command to scp this file to the remote server:

change directory to the backup directory
cd /var/lib/vz/dump

scp vzdump-qemu-0001-2022_05_06-10_10_10.vma root@192.170.10.10:/var/lib/vz/dump/vzdump-qemu-0001-2022_05_06-10_10_10.vma
# this is one single command

Please replace “vzdump-qemu-0001-2022_05_06-10_10_10.vma” with the name of the backup file in the command above. It may take some time, depending on the speed of both ends’ server networks.

Restore the backup

The backup can then be restored using either the command line or the GUI.

Restore backup from command line
Using the command line to restore backup files is simple:

cd /var/lib/vz/dump

qmrestore vzdump-qemu-0001-2022_05_06-10_10_10.vma 0002

The command to restore a VM is qmrestore, followed by the virtual machine name “vzdump-qemu-0001-2022_05_06-10_10_10.vma” and the VM id (0002), any VM ID that has never been used before can be used.

Restore backup from Proxmox GUI

1. 1. 1. Select the local storage location of the transferred backup.
      2. Then, choose “Content.”
      3. Select the backup we just transferred from the list of backups.
      4. Once we’ve chosen a backup, click Restore.
      5. Input VM ID:0002, or whatever ID we want to give the restored VM.
      6. Finally, click Restore.

It will take some time before the VM is restored to the VM ID we specified in the previous step.

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Conclusion

To sum up, We can use the GUI or the command line to transfer virtual machines from one promox node to another, but the command line version is easier to use.