proxmox-backup/docs/maintenance.rst
Thomas Lamprecht 10db4717f1 docs: maintenance: document notifications
can surely be improved, just to have anything..

Signed-off-by: Thomas Lamprecht <t.lamprecht@proxmox.com>
2020-11-06 17:52:15 +01:00

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Maintenance Tasks
=================
Pruning & Garbage Collection
----------------------------
Pruning can be scheduled on both a backup group and a datastore level. To access
pruning functionality for a specific backup group, you can use the prune command
line option discussed in :ref:`backup-pruning`, or navigate to the **Content**
tab of the datastore and click the scissors icon in the **Actions** column of
the relevant backup group. To prune on a datastore level, scheduling options can
be found under the **Prune & GC** tab of the datastore. Here you can set
retention settings and edit the interval at which pruning takes place.
.. image:: images/screenshots/pbs-gui-datastore-prunegc.png
:align: right
:alt: Prune and garbage collection options
You can monitor and run :ref:`garbage collection <garbage-collection>` on the
Proxmox Backup Server using the ``garbage-collection`` subcommand of
``proxmox-backup-manager``. You can use the ``start`` subcommand to manually
start garbage collection on an entire datastore and the ``status`` subcommand to
see attributes relating to the :ref:`garbage collection <garbage-collection>`.
This functionality can also be accessed in the GUI, by navigating to **Prune &
GC** from the top panel. From here, you can edit the schedule at which garbage
collection runs and manually start the operation.
.. _verification:
Verification
------------
.. image:: images/screenshots/pbs-gui-datastore-verifyjob-add.png
:align: right
:alt: Adding a verify job
Proxmox Backup offers various verification options to ensure that backup data is
intact. Verification is generally carried out through the creation of verify
jobs. These are scheduled tasks that run verification at a given interval (see
:ref:`calendar-events`). With these, you can set whether already verified
snapshots are ignored, as well as set a time period, after which verified jobs
are checked again. The interface for creating verify jobs can be found under the
**Verify Jobs** tab of the datastore.
.. Note:: It is recommended that you reverify all backups at least monthly, even
if a previous verification was successful. This is becuase physical drives
are susceptible to damage over time, which can cause an old, working backup
to become corrupted in a process known as `bit rot/data degradation
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation>`_. It is good practice to
have a regularly recurring (hourly/daily) verification job, which checks new
and expired backups, then another weekly/monthly job that will reverify
everything. This way, there will be no surprises when it comes to restoring
data.
Aside from using verify jobs, you can also run verification manually on entire
datastores, backup groups, or snapshots. To do this, navigate to the **Content**
tab of the datastore and either click *Verify All*, or select the *V.* icon from
the *Actions* column in the table.
.. _maintenance_notification:
Notifications
-------------
Proxmox Backup Server can send you notification emails about automatically
scheduled verification, garbage-collection and synchronization tasks results.
By default, notifications are send to the email address configured for the
`root@pam` user. You can set that user for each datastore.
You can also change the level of notification received per task type, the
following options are available:
* Always: send a notification for any scheduled task, independent of the
outcome
* Errors: send a notification for any scheduled task resulting in an error
* Never: do not send any notification at all