Comment, Expert Guide, NewsCohesity announces Proxmox backup

In context of the VMware takeover by Broadcom and the subsequent price increases for many users, our customers have been looking for alternatives, including Proxmox VE. However, one obstacle to the widespread use of Proxmox is the lack of support for Proxmox from major backup providers, as opposed to eg. IBM Storage Protect Plus being capable to backup VMware instances.

With this announcement, Cohesity has now taken steps towards supporting Proxmox and essentially describes two ways: backup via NFS and backup via remote adapter.

Backup via NFS

Proxmox comes with its own backup functionality as standard. In this case, an NFS drive in the Cohesity cluster is created, which is then be integrated into the Proxmox cluster as storage. The Proxmox backup is then instructed to back up to this storage. This has the advantage that Proxmox itself is application aware.

The disadvantage is that the scheduling is then controlled by Proxmox itself and not by Cohesity. Proxmox itself must therefore be checked regularly to ensure that backups have run without errors, or appropriate monitoring must be set up. Another disadvantage is that although the backup of individual or all virtual machines can be set up in the Proxmox interface, the cluster itself or its configuration will not be backed up.

Backup via remote adapter

Alternatively, Cohesity suggests installing the remote adapter on the Proxmox host and then having Cohesity perform the backup via the remote adapter. However, Cohesity is silent in the press release as to whether the remote adapter itself will be application aware. The following wording is somewhat surprising:

‘In this approach, the backup commands can be provided in a script on the Proxmox host to invoke protection.’

This suggests that it is once again up to the administrator of the cluster to search for the commands required for the backup. If the interfaces of Proxmox itself are used for this, this backup is also application aware, but the responsibility for correct implementation is once again in the hands of the cluster administrator. It is yet unknown whether Cohesity will provide a remote adapter that is application aware by itself.

Conclusion

Cohesity has at least recognised the problem, but in our view does not yet offer a complete and therefore fully supported solution. This will only be the case when Cohesity offers a remote adapter that is clearly labelled as application aware for Proxmox and is fully supported, so that you can expect support from Cohesity in the event of an error.

Sources