docs/maintenance.rst

   1 Maintenance Tasks
   2 =================
   3
   4 Pruning & Garbage Collection
   5 ----------------------------
   6
   7 Pruning can be scheduled on both a backup group and a datastore level. To access
   8 pruning functionality for a specific backup group, you can use the prune command
   9 line option discussed in :ref:`backup-pruning`, or navigate to the **Content**
  10 tab of the datastore and click the scissors icon in the **Actions** column of
  11 the relevant backup group. To prune on a datastore level, scheduling options can
  12 be found under the **Prune & GC** tab of the datastore. Here you can set
  13 retention settings and edit the interval at which pruning takes place.
  14
  15 .. image:: images/screenshots/pbs-gui-datastore-prunegc.png
  16   :align: right
  17   :alt: Prune and garbage collection options
  18
  19 You can monitor and run :ref:`garbage collection <garbage-collection>` on the
  20 Proxmox Backup Server using the ``garbage-collection`` subcommand of
  21 ``proxmox-backup-manager``. You can use the ``start`` subcommand to manually
  22 start garbage collection on an entire datastore and the ``status`` subcommand to
  23 see attributes relating to the :ref:`garbage collection <garbage-collection>`.
  24
  25 This functionality can also be accessed in the GUI, by navigating to **Prune &
  26 GC** from the top panel. From here, you can edit the schedule at which garbage
  27 collection runs and manually start the operation.
  28
  29
  30 .. _verification:
  31
  32 Verification
  33 ------------
  34
  35 .. image:: images/screenshots/pbs-gui-datastore-verifyjob-add.png
  36   :align: right
  37   :alt: Adding a verify job
  38
  39 Proxmox Backup offers various verification options to ensure that backup data is
  40 intact.  Verification is generally carried out through the creation of verify
  41 jobs. These are scheduled tasks that run verification at a given interval (see
  42 :ref:`calendar-events`). With these, you can set whether already verified
  43 snapshots are ignored, as well as set a time period, after which verified jobs
  44 are checked again. The interface for creating verify jobs can be found under the
  45 **Verify Jobs** tab of the datastore.
  46
  47 .. Note:: It is recommended that you reverify all backups at least monthly, even
  48   if a previous verification was successful. This is becuase physical drives
  49   are susceptible to damage over time, which can cause an old, working backup
  50   to become corrupted in a process known as `bit rot/data degradation
  51   <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation>`_. It is good practice to
  52   have a regularly recurring (hourly/daily) verification job, which checks new
  53   and expired backups, then another weekly/monthly job that will reverify
  54   everything. This way, there will be no surprises when it comes to restoring
  55   data.
  56
  57 Aside from using verify jobs, you can also run verification manually on entire
  58 datastores, backup groups, or snapshots. To do this, navigate to the **Content**
  59 tab of the datastore and either click *Verify All*, or select the *V.* icon from
  60 the *Actions* column in the table.
  61
  62 .. _maintenance_notification:
  63
  64 Notifications
  65 -------------
  66
  67 Proxmox Backup Server can send you notification emails about automatically
  68 scheduled verification, garbage-collection and synchronization tasks results.
  69
  70 By default, notifications are send to the email address configured for the
  71 `root@pam` user. You can set that user for each datastore.
  72
  73 You can also change the level of notification received per task type, the
  74 following options are available:
  75
  76 * Always: send a notification for any scheduled task, independent of the
  77   outcome
  78
  79 * Errors: send a notification for any scheduled task resulting in an error
  80
  81 * Never: do not send any notification at all