where we're going, we don't need backups!

I just rsync a full backup of my NAS's entire RAID array every week to a separate machine. I have Proxmox set up with an NFS mount to the NAS where it stores all of the /[userdata] volumes that my VMs and LXCs use; Proxmox itself is hosted on 3x office PCs, each with i7-7700/500GB SSD/32GB RAM, and set up for replication in case one goes down. On occasion I'll actually document which services I'm using, so I don't really bother backing those up since the volume(s) holding the userdata itself is backed up and can be easily remapped to a new instance of whatever service needs it.

I know I’ll get shot for this, but I stopped backing up a long time ago.

I was doing it at home because I do it at work and it’s the done thing. But when I stopped to think about it, I realised I don’t have anything at home that actually matters. If I lose my Plex library it’s ok.

For configs I use Home Manager on a public Git repo. And for everything else I use Pika Backup.

Always last daily, weekly, monthly. The others are pointers (hardlinks). How many years, i'm not there yet.

Other than my password manager database, the rest of my backups are not overly valuable. I don't really need my 2016 factorio saves, but I have them. Adding more things to backup is minimal effort so I do, but if the space taken up becomes a concern there is plenty I could trim from it.

Most of what I would use proxmox for doesn't even require backing up. A copy of each VM when it is setup and possibly update that every few years would be plenty.

I think you can export the whole VM? Using virtualbox currently which has import/export appliance. Doing that on an infrequent basis is pretty much what I would need.

Proxmox has backup stuff for VMs and containers which uses whatever storage youbadd (local, NFS,), and has retention settings. iirc those will always be full backups. for incremental and more, proxmox backup server (PBS VM using backupNAS as destination for me)

Still don't consider it a proper back up personally.

It's just not a good long term solution. A short term backup for redundancy while actively working on something sure. Just keep it local.

But as a real actual backup? No, local doesn't cut it.

The tapes are $5 but the drive was $400.

It's linear, so you have to pull a whole backup at a time, but it is possible to store multiple unique backups on a single tape, and only pull one.