Using CIFS/SMB with Proxmox Backup Server 3

By default, Proxmox Backup Server expects
- Local storage
- SSD storage
PBS can work with CIFS/SMB or NFS storage and HDDs, but restoring backups will be very slow.
- By slow I mean around 40 minutes to restore a 60GB virtual machine.
- But for some, like me, the storage savigs are worth the performance tradeoff
- I would not recommend this in a corporate production environment, but it is perfectly fine for a homelab.

Setting up CIFS share

Unlike in PVE, there is no GUI way to mount a CIFS share
We will have to do it manually
Add the following to your /etc/fstab file
```
//serverip/networkshare /media/localfolder cifs vers=3.0,credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777,uid=34,gid=34
```
- Let me guide you on how to put the proper parameters where
1. First is IP slash Network share where you want to put the PBS datastore
2. Second is the local folder on the PBS filesystem where it will be mounted
3. Third is saying fstab we want to use SMB and it's version (in this case 3.0)
4. Fourth is path to location of our credentials file
  - You can put username and password into fstab but it is not a good idea
  - The .smbcredentials file will contain username and password that can read and write to the network share we want to store in, ie
```
//serverip/networkshare
```
  - Example content of the .smbcredentials file
```
username=serviceuser
password=o8nbarm4agsrip8kef
```
  - After creating the file and adding these two lines into it we need to protect it, so run
```
chmod 400 ./smbcredentials
```
5. Rest is what character set we will use, what chmod will created files and folders me (0777 isn't secure but it's simple and it works)
6. Last, uid and gid is imporant. 34 is the user ID of the proxmox “backup” user, which has to appear to PBS as the owner of the /media/localfolder folder
- Example of a full fstab entry
```
//nas.laptopwiki.local/backups/pbs /media/nas cifs vers=3.0,credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777,uid=34,gid=34
```

Adding a datastore

In PBS, in the left menu, click Add Datastore
Name is what will it be listed as and what we will need to use when we add it to Proxmox VE
Let's call it “datastore1”
Backing path is the full local path of the network share we set up in previous step, so “/media/nas”
Add the datastore
If you are on HDDs, this will take a while. Mine took about 2 hours on a pair of Seagate Exos 16TB drives in RAID 1

Adding PBS datastore to Proxmox VE

In PVE, go to

Datacenter
Storage
Add
Proxmox Backup Server

ID = what it will be called, let's call it “pbs1”
Server = IP/DNS name of your PBS server
Username = easiest is to use root@pam, that will add it as our root user we also use to log in into PBS
Password = password for our root user
Datastore = name of the datastore we created, in our case datastore1
Now go back into PBS and click on Dashboard
In the middle of the screen will be a Fingerprint button
Press that, copy the long string and paste it into our “Add Storage” dialog we have currently open in PVE.
Click Add

Table of Contents

Using CIFS/SMB with Proxmox Backup Server 3

Setting up CIFS share

Adding a datastore

Adding PBS datastore to Proxmox VE