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How to manually backup a Proxmox virtual machine

If you want to backup virtual machines at a given point in time, you can trigger a manual backup on a virtual machine. After the manual backup is complete, the next backup happens as per the schedule defined in the backup policy.

Considerations

  • A manual backup is not restricted by the backup window that you defined in the backup policy; it continues till all the data is backed up.

  • If you restart or reboot your virtual machines during backups, the backup operation is aborted. Hybrid Workloads agents or backup proxy start a fresh backup following the backup schedule. Alternatively, you can start a manual backup at any time.

  • A manual backup is not restricted by bandwidth, it uses the maximum bandwidth available.

  • The Automatic Retry feature does not work with manual backups.

  • When the Proxmox VE UI disk size differs from the internal vg or zpool allocation, backup and restore processes utilize the actual storage size defined by the Volume Group or ZFS Pool rather than the UI-reported size.

To manually back up a virtual machine

  1. Log in to the Management Console.

  2. From the top menu bar, select your organization if organizations are enabled.

  3. Click Protect > Proxmox.
    The All Nodes page appears that lists all the registered nodes/clusters.

  4. Select the registered node/cluster from the Node list in the left navigation pane.

  5. In the left navigation pane, click Configured VMs.

  6. Select the virtual machine(s) you want to backup.

  7. Click Backup Now and confirm your action.

Backup of the selected virtual machines start. You can track the progress and details about the backup job in progress on the Proxmox jobs page.

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