Passive Metrics Collection for Firewalled PBS Instances

[MaxZhaoSentec]

I run a secondary PBS instance in a firewalled environment, isolated from the primary PVE servers. This PBS is configured to pull backups only (via sync jobs), and it blocks all incoming connections by default, including those from monitoring systems like Pulse.

Would it be possible to support a "collector" or agent mode for Pulse on such PBS instances? In this mode, the collector would gather the necessary monitoring data locally and periodically push it to the central Pulse server, rather than requiring Pulse to initiate a connection.

This push-based model would allow monitoring of air-gapped or outbound-only PBS nodes without compromising the firewall policies or exposing additional ports. It would also mirror the architecture already used for pull-based backups.

[rcourtman]

PBS push mode is now available in v3.33.0-rc2. This lets your isolated PBS instance push metrics to Pulse instead of Pulse trying to reach it.

How it works: A lightweight agent runs on your PBS server, collects metrics locally, and pushes them to Pulse over HTTPS. No incoming connections needed on the PBS side - perfect for your firewalled environment. The UI shows which PBS servers are using push vs pull mode.

The agent collects the same metrics Pulse normally would (node status, datastore usage, backup tasks) and pushes them every 30 seconds. If the connection fails, it retries automatically. Pulse marks the PBS as offline if no data arrives for 2 minutes. The whole thing runs as a systemd service with a non-root user.

This is untested - I need your help to verify it works with your setup. The installer should handle everything but I'm particularly interested if the agent can connect through your firewall and if the metrics show up correctly.

Full docs: https://github.com/rcourtman/Pulse/blob/main/docs/PBS_PUSH_MODE.md

Let me know if you run into any issues.

[MaxZhaoSentec]

I'm getting this error in the agent (PBS side)

Jun 30 17:39:12 pbs node[2928]: Collecting PBS metrics...
Jun 30 17:39:12 pbs node[2928]: Using node name: localhost
Jun 30 17:39:12 pbs node[2928]: Collected metrics: 1 datastores, 100 tasks
Jun 30 17:39:12 pbs node[2928]: Pushing metrics to https:******.com/api/push/metrics (scrambled for privacy)
Jun 30 17:39:12 pbs node[2928]: [2025-06-30T16:39:12.677Z] Error pushing metrics (attempt 5/10): Request failed with status code 500
Jun 30 17:39:12 pbs node[2928]: Response: 500 {
Jun 30 17:39:12 pbs node[2928]:   error: 'Failed to process metrics',
Jun 30 17:39:12 pbs node[2928]:   message: 'metricsHistory.addNodeMetrics is not a function'
Jun 30 17:39:12 pbs node[2928]: }

[MaxZhaoSentec]

Looks like the metricsHistory.addNodeMetrics function is called in server/routes/push.js but not defined anywhere in the codebase

[rcourtman]

Thanks for finding this. Fixed it to use addNodeMetricData instead - should work now in v3.34.0-rc1.

https://github.com/rcourtman/Pulse/releases/tag/v3.34.0-rc1