Proxmox Backup Server Installation Guide

Proxmox Backup Server Requirements

Before you begin, make sure you meet the following requirements for a production machine:

• CPU: A modern 64-bit AMD or Intel-based CPU with at least 4 cores.
• RAM: At least 4 GiB for the operating system, the filesystem cache, and the Proxmox Backup Server daemons. Add at least one additional GiB for every TiB of storage space.
• Operating System Storage:
  • 32 GiB or more of free storage space.
  • Use a hardware RAID with a battery-backed write cache (BBU) or a redundant ZFS configuration (ZFS is not compatible with a hardware RAID controller).
• Storage for backups:
  • Prefer fast storage that offers high IOPS for random I/O workloads; use only enterprise-grade SSDs for best results.
  • If using HDDs: It is highly recommended to use a metadata cache, such as adding a ZFS “special device mirror.”
• Network cards: Use redundant network cards with multi-Gbit/s interfaces.

Requirements for this guide

For the installation described in this guide, you will need:

1. Internet access to download the Proxmox Backup Server ISO image
2. A USB flash drive with at least 4GB of storage to create a bootable drive
3. Basic knowledge of system administration (if you’d prefer to delegate the basic configuration, security, and operational management of your servers, check out our professional Linux support services)

Downloading the ISO Image

First, download the Proxmox Backup Server ISO image from the official Proxmox website.

Installing Proxmox Backup Server

Creating a bootable USB drive

Depending on your operating system, the procedure for creating the PBS bootable USB drive varies. Here’s how to do it

a. Instructions for Windows

Use a tool like Rufus to create a bootable USB drive with the Proxmox Backup Server ISO image.

b. Instructions for Linux

You can write cp the image directly to the bootable USB device using these commands

1. Identify the device you just inserted—in this case /dev/sdd

   sudo dmesg | tail

   [ 6141.877937]  sdd: sdd1

2. Navigate to the directory where you downloaded PBS

   cd $HOME/Download

3. Copy the file to the device we identified earlier

   sudo  cp ./proxmox-backup-server*.iso of=/dev/DEVICE

4. Let’s mount the filesystems

   sudo sync

c. Instructions for macOS

1. Open Terminal (search for "Terminal" in Spotlight).

2. Convert the file .iso to the .dmg using the `convert` option of hdiutil. For example:

   hdiutil convert proxmox-backup-server_*.iso -format UDRW -o proxmox-backup-server_*.dmg

   Note: macOS tends to automatically add .dmg to the output file name.

3. To get the current list of devices, run the command:

   diskutil list

4. Insert the USB flash drive and run the command again to determine which device node it has been assigned to (for example, /dev/diskX).

   diskutil list

5. Unmount the USB drive with the command:

   diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX

   Note: Replace X with the disk number obtained from the previous command.

6. Write the image .dmg to the USB flash drive using:

   sudo dd if=proxmox-backup-server_*.dmg bs=1M of=/dev/rdiskX

   Note: In the last command, use rdiskX instead of diskX to increase the write speed.

Booting from the USB device

• Insert the USB flash drive into the physical server or virtual machine and boot the system from the USB device.

Operating System Installation

Follow the on-screen instructions to install Proxmox Backup Server on your hardware, starting with the graphical installation.

Create a password for the default user root, the system administrator

Select the primary disk and any RAID

 Configure the static IP address

Review the configuration summary

Once the installation is complete, the console will appear with the login credentials and the web interface address

With this final step, we have successfully installed Proxmox Backup Server. Now that the system is up and running, the next step is to connect it to your cluster and set up the datastores. Discover all the operational steps in our dedicated guide to Proxmox Backup Server Configuration.