Automating Proxmox Backups with Home Assistant

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1

Hey everyone,

I recently rebuilt my homelab as 3 devices and I wanted to share my automation that powers the automated backup system.

Hardware

  • A NUC with Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) that runs my HASS VM
  • A NUC that runs Proxmox Backup Server (PBS)
  • A NAS

The PBS node backs up and deduplicates the PVE containers every night, but I didn’t want to have to run it 24/7. I figured I could use the HTTP APIs of both PVE and PBS to automate the process. But how can I tie this all together into a recurring automation? The answer is Home Assistant of course :slight_smile:

The automation

  1. 03:00 - HA sends a Wake-on-LAN magic packet to PBS
  2. HA waits for the Ping binary sensor to go on
  3. HA calls the PVE REST API to start a vzdump
  4. When the job finishes, PVE fires a webhook back to HA
  5. HA calls the PBS API to shut it down

I also documented the whole build and the automation process here: Automating Proxmox Backups with Home Assistant (and on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT0eXgGsZFI).

Config

This is the YAML configuration that made this possible:

configuration.yaml

wake_on_lan:

rest_command:
  pve_start_backup:
    url: "https://<PVE_IP>:8006/api2/json/nodes/pve/vzdump"
    method: POST
    headers:
      Authorization: !secret pve_api_token
    content_type: "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
    payload: "storage=pbs&mode=snapshot&compress=zstd&all=1"
    verify_ssl: false

  pbs_shutdown:
    url: "https://<PBS_IP>:8007/api2/json/nodes/localhost/status"
    method: POST
    headers:
      Authorization: !secret pbs_api_token
    content_type: "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
    payload: "command=shutdown"
    verify_ssl: false

automations.yaml

- id: pbs_backup_cycle
  alias: PBS Backup Cycle
  trigger:
    - platform: time
      at: "03:00:00"
  action:
    - service: wake_on_lan.send_magic_packet
      data:
        mac: "<PBS_MAC>"

    - wait_for_trigger:
        - platform: state
          entity_id: binary_sensor.pbs_online
          to: "on"
      timeout: "00:05:00"
      continue_on_timeout: false

    - delay: "00:00:30"

    - service: rest_command.pve_start_backup

    - wait_for_trigger:
        - platform: webhook
          webhook_id: pbs_backup_complete
          local_only: true
      timeout: "02:00:00"
      continue_on_timeout: true

    - service: rest_command.pbs_shutdown

And in PVE I configured a notification target pointing at http://<HA_IP>:8123/api/webhook/pbs_backup_complete (POST, body {}) and a matcher on exact:type=vzdump, with the backup job set to notification-system.

Conclusion

It was a bit of work, but I have my whole homelab running at about ~70W in 3U, and the PBS node is only awake for about 10 minutes a night. Really happy to have found the Ping and Wake on Lan integrations.

I wonder if anyone else has used these integrations before, and I’m happy to answer any questions!

2

That’s very cool. I have Dell OptiPlex nodes for PVE and PBS, but they only rarely get above 30w.

So I’m wondering where your 70w is coming from. More powerful nucs?

3

Nice! Is that 30W for both or each? And did you do any tweaking around the C States? My main NUC draws around 30W. Most of that 70W goes to the UNAS Pro including 3 HDDs.

I fortunately don’t have a way to measure them independently anymore as all devices are hooked up to my UPS which doesn’t have monitoring per outlet.

4

It’s total for the two i5 8GB 128GB and a 4TB external USB drive which is idle except for a few minutes each day.

The nodes aren’t doing much either yet, HAOS, Portainer, so no tweaking.

5

Here, give this a shot PSA How to configure Proxmox for lower power usage