Mastering Proxmox - Third Edition

A full backup

A full backup is a complete, compressed backup of a virtual machine, including its configuration file. We can take this backup and restore it locally to the same cluster or to an entirely different Proxmox cluster. We can potentially set up a full backup every day, or on a different schedule of up to one week. Since a full backup commits the complete backup of the entire virtual machine, including all the virtual disk images in it, it is the slowest backup option. It is also the safest, since the final backup file is not dependent on the original VM. Two of the most important components of a full backup are backup modes and compression level.