Proxmox

The Proxmox integration wraps Proxmox’s native vzdump tool to back up virtual machines and containers into a Kloset store. Plakar handles encryption, deduplication, and snapshot management on top of the archives that vzdump produces.

The integration provides two connectors:

Requirements

• Proxmox VE with vzdump available on the node.
• SSH access to the Proxmox node with appropriate permissions (remote mode).
• Plakar v1.1.0-beta or later.

Typical use cases

• Encrypted, deduplicated backups of Proxmox VMs and containers.
• Cross-cluster VM migration and restore.
• Long-term archiving to object storage (S3, Scaleway, OVH, Exoscale).
• Centralized backup of multiple hypervisors from a single Plakar instance.

The Proxmox integration is distributed as a Plakar package.

$ plakar pkg add proxmox

$ plakar pkg list

$ plakar pkg build proxmox

$ plakar pkg add ./proxmox_v1.0.0_darwin_arm64.ptar

$ plakar pkg list

To list, upgrade, or remove the package, see managing packages guide.

The Proxmox integration supports two operating modes.

Local mode — Plakar runs directly on the Proxmox node alongside vzdump:

Proxmox node
 ├ vzdump
 └ plakar

Remote mode — Plakar runs on a separate machine and connects to the Proxmox node over SSH:

Backup server
     │
     │ SSH
     ▼
Proxmox node
     └ vzdump

Remote mode allows a single Plakar instance to back up multiple hypervisors. The operating mode is set via the mode option when configuring a source or destination.

The source connector invokes vzdump on the Proxmox node, collects the resulting archive, and ingests it into a Kloset store with encryption and deduplication.

flowchart LR

subgraph Source["Proxmox Node"]
  Vzdump["vzdump"]
end

Plakar["Plakar"]

Via["Retrieve archive via
SSH"]

Transform["Encrypt & deduplicate"]

Store["Kloset Store"]

Vzdump --> Via --> Plakar --> Transform --> Store

Register a Proxmox source:

$ plakar source add myProxmox proxmox+backup://10.0.0.10 \
  mode=remote \
  conn_username=root \
  conn_identity_file=/path/to/key \
  conn_method=identity

Back up a single virtual machine by ID:

$ plakar backup -o vmid=101 @myProxmox

Back up all machines in a pool:

$ plakar backup -o pool=prod @myProxmox

Back up the entire hypervisor:

$ plakar backup -o all @myProxmox

The destination connector uploads a vzdump archive from a Plakar snapshot to a Proxmox node and restores it using native Proxmox tools: qmrestore for virtual machines and pct restore for containers.

flowchart LR

Store["Kloset Store"]

Plakar["Plakar"]

Transform["Decrypt & reconstruct"]

Via["Push archive via
SSH"]

subgraph Destination["Proxmox Node"]
  Restore["qmrestore / pct restore"]
end

Store --> Plakar --> Transform --> Via --> Restore

Register a Proxmox destination:

$ plakar destination add myProxmox \
  proxmox+backup://10.0.0.10 \
  mode=remote \
  conn_username=root \
  conn_identity_file=/path/to/key \
  conn_method=identity

Restore all machines in a snapshot:

$ plakar restore -to @myProxmox <snapshot_id>

Restore a single VM from a snapshot containing multiple machines:

$ plakar restore -to @myProxmox <snapshot_id>:/backup/qemu/101_myvm

What is captured during backup

• Virtual machine and container disk images, as produced by vzdump.
• Proxmox configuration associated with each backed-up workload.

Snapshot consistency

Plakar relies on vzdump for snapshot consistency. For live machines, vzdump uses QEMU guest agent or suspend-resume to produce a consistent backup. Refer to the Proxmox vzdump documentation for details on consistency modes.

• Proxmox VE Backup and Restore
• Backing up Proxmox with Plakar: a third-party integration built in a few days