the proxmox ve backup solution that is built into itself works well. it can be improved by using their dedicated os, proxmox backup server. this includes incremental backups of containers and virtual machines, de-duplication, and more. this is a great feature as the backups will save lot of space. instead of full backups of a machine, it compares against the current machine and incrementally does a backup. my current drive is five hundred gigs, and it is full. i do have retention set to the last ten backups, but as i spin up more containers and virtual machines and start backing those up, storage will be an issue.

i tested out proxmox backup server in vmware, and watched some videos about how to set it up. i know by documentation, it is better to install it on its dedicated hardware, but i do not have that right now. i want to make sure this second server can be used in various ways, so virtualizing the backup server is fine for now. plus this is a home lab, no business is happening any time soon. anyways, i figured out that i can add a datastore from an nfs share, so i will be setting that up. there are youtube videos showing how to do it, it is not the best solution, but i thought it would be best since i am using truenas scale as my nas operating system.

and these backups will be happening during the night, so i am not really concerned for backup times. they should be done by the morning anyways since the total space is not that much. and when the incremental backups start, it will be very quick and the server will not be backing up everything each time, just the changes that are made to the server. so initial backups will be slow, but after that, it will by speed.