The short answer
For a small home lab, run PBS on a separate machine or at least separate storage, create one datastore, connect it from Proxmox VE, schedule VM/LXC backups, set retention, enable verification, and test restoring a small VM before trusting the system.
Do not overbuild the first version. A boring box with enough RAM, reliable disks, and documented restore steps beats a clever design nobody can recover under pressure.
Starter checklist
| Step | Action | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Choose separate backup hardware or storage | A host failure should not take the backup with it |
| 2 | Create a datastore for VM and container backups | PBS stores backups in datastores with retention and maintenance settings |
| 3 | Add PBS as storage in Proxmox VE | This makes scheduled VM/LXC backup jobs straightforward |
| 4 | Set pruning and garbage collection | Retention removes old snapshots; garbage collection reclaims chunks later |
| 5 | Enable verification jobs | Backups should be checked before the day you need them |
| 6 | Restore one small VM or LXC | A backup plan is not real until a restore works |
Hardware guidance
Proxmox's current documentation separates evaluation minimums from recommended production hardware. For a real home lab backup target, plan for a modern 64-bit CPU, at least 4 GB RAM for the OS and PBS services, plus additional RAM as storage grows.
If you use HDDs, expect random IO to matter. PBS documentation recommends fast storage for backup storage and notes that HDD setups benefit from metadata caching such as a mirrored ZFS special device.
What I would do first
Start with one datastore named clearly, such as vm-backups. Back up one low-risk VM nightly, keep a simple daily/weekly retention policy, run verification weekly, and do a restore drill. After that works, expand coverage.
Source checks
Proxmox documents PBS datastores, pruning, garbage collection, verification, and current hardware requirements. It also recommends dedicated hardware for production backup use and warns that evaluation minimums should not be treated as production guidance.
References: PBS system requirements, PBS datastore documentation, PBS maintenance tasks, and PBS get started.