Proxmox vzdump — Quick Command-Line Backup Guide

Iris Li

Need a fast, reliable way to back up Proxmox VMs and containers from the CLI? vzdump is the built-in Proxmox utility that handles full backups (snapshot/stop/suspend modes), offers compression choices (gzip/lzo/zstd), bandwidth limiting and scheduling — everything you need to automate safe VM protection. If you’re setting up backup routines or troubleshooting backups, this short primer points you to the essential commands and options. Read the full article for step-by-step examples and usage notes.
Proxmox vzdump: Features and Commonly Used Commands

Curtis Stanhope

What if the snapshot mode fails? Should we just give up?

Landon Fairfax

Curtis Stanhope Don't give up. Snapshots depend on storage support (LVM, ZFS, Ceph, etc.). Common fallbacks include:

--mode suspend: Briefly suspends the VM, a compromise for online backups;

--mode stop: Shuts down the VM for backup (most stable but involves downtime).

Example:

vzdump 102 --mode suspend --compress lzo --storage backup

Victor Bramwell

We have hundreds or thousands of VMs; can we back them up all at once using vzdump --all?

Landon Fairfax

Victor Bramwell Yes, but be careful about concurrency and backend load.

Victor Bramwell

Landon Fairfax Got it. Thank you.