How to backup a Proxmox VM to a different node not using a cluster

Question

I'm trying to do a simple backup and restore for two proxmox servers in a single command.

So far I've got this command:

vzdump <vmid> --stdout true | ssh root@<ip> -- qmrestore - --force true <newvmid> --storage <backupstoragename>

but it errors with:

could not get storage information for 'local': can't use storage 'local' for backups - wrong content type

and it times out.

It looks like this should work, both vzdump and qmrestore support piping.

References:

• https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/vzdump-to-stdin-over-ssh.33039/
• https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/qmrestore-does-not-work-with-stdin.69789/

Answer 1

The answer to this is REAL simple! Just change the content type for the storage to include "VZDump backup file". Do this to the storage on the source and target hosts, and can be done via the web GUI.

Also make sure that the target host storage supports "Disk image" for the unpacking.