Proxmox Disaster Recovery — when worst case strikes
Hardware failure, data center outage, ransomware attack. With defined RTO/RPO values, documented failover runbooks and regular DR drills, we bring your workloads back online in minutes or hours — not days.
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The following are trademarks of their respective owners: Proxmox VE (Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH). WZ-IT is an independent service provider and has no business, partnership, or contractual relationship with these companies. We offer independent migration, installation, hosting, and operations services.
Backups alone are not enough
A good backup system means you don't lose data. A DR strategy means you come back online — in a planned, defined timeframe.
Without clear RTO/RPO values, without failover runbooks and without regular tests, your "disaster recovery" is just hope.
Recovery Time Objective: How long does recovery take?
Recovery Point Objective: How much data can be lost?
Business Impact Analysis: What does one hour of downtime cost?
Regular failover tests — otherwise nothing is validated.
Which DR tier fits your business?
From cost-effective backup DR to hot standby with 5-minute failover.
Backup DR
PBS backups offsite (e.g. Hetzner Storage Box). In disaster case, restore to replacement hardware.
- PBS 4.2 with S3 object storage
- Encrypted offsite replication
- Quarterly restore tests
- Replacement hardware provisioning
Warm Standby
Second Proxmox setup at separate location. Asynchronous ZFS/storage replication, manual failover.
- Cross-datacenter replication
- ZFS send/receive or Ceph RBD
- Documented failover runbooks
- Semi-annual DR drills
Hot Standby (HA)
Stretched cluster across two locations. Synchronous replication, automatic failover via HA Rules.
- Stretched Ceph cluster
- Synchronous replication
- Automatic failover (HA Rules)
- Quarterly failover tests
From risk analysis to failover drill
Risk & Impact Analysis
Which workloads are business-critical? What does one hour of downtime cost? We define RTO/RPO per workload.
DR Strategy & Architecture
Backup DR, warm or hot standby? Design of replication topology and failover mechanisms.
Implementation
Building the DR setup, configuring replication and backups, creating the runbooks.
DR Drills & Continuous Testing
Regular failover tests in test environments, automated restore validation, annual full DR drill.
Backup protects against data loss — you can restore individual files or VMs from a specific point in time. Disaster recovery is the planned restoration of your entire infrastructure after a complete failure, with defined RTO (recovery time) and RPO (max data loss). DR needs backup, but backup alone is not DR.
RTO (Recovery Time Objective) = maximum acceptable downtime. RPO (Recovery Point Objective) = acceptable data loss. Example: RTO 4h / RPO 1h means maximum 4 hours downtime and maximum 1 hour of data loss. These values define the DR strategy and thus the costs.
A stretched cluster distributes Ceph nodes across two locations with low latency (typically <5ms). Data is replicated synchronously — if one location fails, the other takes over without data loss. Requirement: dedicated fiber connection and three sites for quorum (two data sites + one tiebreaker).
Best practice: At least semi-annual full failover test in an isolated test environment, annual full DR drill with failover to the DR site. Restore tests of individual VMs should run automated quarterly. Without regular tests, DR is just theory.
Yes, but only with air-gapped backups or immutable backups. PBS provides client-side encryption; combined with object lock (on S3 backends), backups are protected from ransomware. Important: at least one copy offsite and immutable.
Backup DR (RTO 8-24h): from €1,500 setup + monthly storage. Warm standby (RTO 1-4h): from €6,000 setup + second hosting. Hot standby (RTO <5min): from €18,000 setup + stretched cluster. We calculate TCO based on your RTO/RPO requirements and compare with the risk value (downtime costs × probability).
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What do our customers say?
Let's Talk About Your Idea
Whether a specific IT challenge or just an idea – we look forward to the exchange. In a brief conversation, we'll evaluate together if and how your project fits with WZ-IT.
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Timo Wevelsiep & Robin Zins
Managing Directors of WZ-IT