Expose the date of Proxmox and Synology backups in Home Assistant

One of the most important aspects of managing a smart home is ensuring service continuity and the fastest possible failure recovery in case of a component malfunction. In this scenario, periodic backups of the involved systems become critically important. In my specific case, I have adopted this strategy (there are others that are better, more comprehensive, and more reliable, but the principle of this tutorial applies in any case):

What’s missing in this scenario is a structured feedback mechanism. Sure, I could configure email notifications with the backup results (or only in case of errors), but instead, I preferred to expose this information in Home Assistant, allowing me to view it on a Lovelace dashboard or use it as a trigger for other automations.



Step 1: Use a centralized notification service

Both Proxmox and Synology DSM supports Gotify as a notification service. If you don’t need both Proxmox and Synology, never mind: I used the same strategy for both but you can configure only the one that you need, skipping the part you’re not interested on.

Install and configure Gotify:

Please refer to Gotify’s official documentation for installing and configuring. I installed it in a Proxmox LXC by using the helper script provided by Community-Scripts. Once installed the setup is really simple: under Apps menù create an application and copy the token you will use to configure It; repeat for each application you need (in my case both Proxmox and Synology)

Gotify


Configure Proxmox to use Gotify

To configure Gotify as a notification service in Proxmox, you have to select Notifications menu at Datacenter level, then simply add a line for Gotify specifiyng the IP address of Gotify server and the token copied from the picture above. After that you have to modify the scheduled Backup job and specify Notification system as notification mode like in the following picture:

Backup Config

Configure Synology DSM to use Gotify as notification service

Configure a notification service in Synology DSM is quite more complex than in Proxmox: I suggest you to find a proper guide or the official documentation, since the procedure might change in the future and this page might not be updated.

By the way, there are a few steps to complete:

1. Configure a specific rule

You can highly customize each notification, so I defined a new Webhook Rule that only returns events of the “Critical” type, except for the apps I am interested in: Active Backup for Business and Hyper Backup. For these, I requested to receive notifications even for “Information” events when a backup is completed.

2. Configure new Webhook

This is the most important part: be sure to replace the [gotify_ip] and [generated_token_for_Synology_app] with the IP address of Gotify server and the token copied from picture above for Synology App. If something doesn’t work, check this part 😉

Webhook

With both Proxmox and Synology, you can send a test message; if everything worked correctly, you should find a copy of the sent message under each application in the Gotify dashboard.





Step 2: Install and configure a MQTT Broker

MQTT is the most commonly used messaging protocol for the Internet of Things (IoT); It operates on a publish-subscribe model where devices (clients) communicate by publishing messages to specific topics or subscribing to receive messages from them. A central broker manages message routing, ensuring published data is delivered only to clients subscribed to the relevant topics. Since we will use MQTT to publish last backup date to Home Assistant, you need a MQTT broker (such as Mosquitto) already up&running. If not, you could install and configure Eclipse Mosquitto as a standalone service in a Proxmox LXC (again you can use the helper script provided by Community-Scripts) or directly from Home Assistant via the official Add-On. Once installed, take note of the mqtt_broker_address and port (usually 1883), and of the choosen username and password.





Step 3: Install and configure Node-RED

Node-RED is a flow-based development tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs, and online services using a browser-based visual editor. It enables users to create and deploy automation workflows with ease, leveraging a wide range of built-in nodes and community-contributed extensions. It allows users to write complex automation with ease. As with MQTT, it can be installed in a Proxmox LXC container through a community script, rather than directly in Home Assistant through an addon.For further information pleas refer to Node-RED official site.





Step 4: Examine the logs, extract the relevant ones, and convert them into MQTT messages with Node-RED.

Node-RED Flow

This Node-RED flow is designed to handle backup notifications from Gotify, filter and process relevant messages, and forward the results to MQTT topics for monitoring. It retrieves backup information from two services (Proxmox and Synology) and formats the data to be published to an MQTT broker. The processed backup status sent to MQTT topics can be easily integrated with other home automation systems or monitoring dashboards (like Home Assistant, Homey, OpenHab, …).

How to Use

Configuration Steps

  1. Import Flow:

  2. MQTT Broker Configuration:

    • Replace mqtt_broker_address in the MQTT nodes with the address of your MQTT broker.

  3. Modify the Flow:

    • Modify the Flow accordingly to your specific needs: you can modify MQTT topics, collect more data, change the schedule, remove Proxmox or Synology if you need only one of them, and so on.

  4. Deploy the Flow:

    • After importing the flow, click the Deploy button to start the flow. You can trigger it by calling the exposed API (since it’s a GET method you can also call it from a broswer tab). If everything works, with a tool like MQTT Explorer you will be able to see the published messages.

HA Device

Flow Components

1. HTTP Request to Gotify Server

2. Parsing and Filtering Messages

Proxmox Backup Filtering:

Synology Backup Filtering:

3. MQTT Out Nodes

Example MQTT Topics

These topics will contain the status of each service’s backup and the timestamp of the last backup triggered.





Step 5: Read the data in Home Assistant

Configure sensors:

in configuration.yaml add or modify the mqtt section by defining all the sensor you need with the relative MQTT Topic:

mqtt:
  - sensor:
    - name: "Last Home Assistant Config Backup"
      state_topic: "nodered/BackupNotifications/Synology/Home Assistant"
      device_class: timestamp

    - name: "Last NAS S3 Backup"
      state_topic: "nodered/BackupNotifications/Synology/S3Backup"
      device_class: timestamp
  
    - name: "Last ADGuard Backup"
      state_topic: "nodered/BackupNotifications/Proxmox/adguard"
      device_class: timestamp
    - name: "Last Cloudflared Backup"
      state_topic: "nodered/BackupNotifications/Proxmox/cloudflared"
      device_class: timestamp
    - name: "Last MQTT Backup"
      state_topic: "nodered/BackupNotifications/Proxmox/mqtt"
      device_class: timestamp
    - name: "Last Zigbee2MQTT Backup"
      state_topic: "nodered/BackupNotifications/Proxmox/zigbee2mqtt"
      device_class: timestamp
    - name: "Last Home Assistant Backup"
      state_topic: "nodered/BackupNotifications/Proxmox/homeassistant"
      device_class: timestamp
  
    - name: "Backup Notifications Last Triggered"
      state_topic: "nodered/BackupNotifications/LastTriggered"
      device_class: timestamp

Then, if you want to have only one sensor for notifying if a backup failed or is missing, just define a group with all the sensors you need and a template sensor:

group:
  - pxmxbackups:
    name: Proxmox Backups
    icon: mdi:backup-restore
    entities:
      - sensor.last_adguard_backup
      - sensor.last_cloudflared_backup
      - sensor.last_mqtt_backup
      - sensor.last_zigbee2mqtt_backup
      - sensor.last_home_assistant_backup
    

template:
  - sensor:
    - unique_id: "ba18fae6-b722-4264-b654-5468ae60c02c"
      name: "Missing Proxmox Backups"
      icon: mdi:backup-restore
      state: >
        {% set outdated_sensors = namespace(sensors=[]) %}
        {% for sensor in states.sensor|selectattr('entity_id', 'in', state_attr('group.pxmxbackups', 'entity_id')) %}
          {% if sensor.state in ['unavailable','unknown','none'] or now() - sensor.state | as_datetime | as_local >= timedelta(days=7) %}
              {% set outdated_sensors.sensors = outdated_sensors.sensors + [dict(name = sensor.name | replace('Last ', '') | replace(' Backup', ''))]| map(attribute='name') | list %}
          {% endif %}
        {% endfor %}
        {% if outdated_sensors.sensors|length == 0 %}
           All backups are OK
        {% elif outdated_sensors.sensors|length == 1 %}
          {{ outdated_sensors.sensors[0] }} doesn't have recent backups
        {% else %}
          {{ outdated_sensors.sensors[:-1]|join(', ') }}{{ ', ' if outdated_sensors.sensors|length > 2 else ' ' }} e {{ outdated_sensors.sensors[-1] }}{{ ' don't have recent backups.' if outdated_sensors.sensors|length > 2 else ' aren't recent.'}}
        {% endif %}

Show a chip on a Lovelace dashboard if some backup are missing:

In this example, if there is a missing backup, I show a Mushroom Chip Card, like for low battery alarm and other warnings. You can use the card you prefer: please refer to Home Assistant Lovelace documentation for further assistance.

lovelace-chip

lovelace-info

- type: custom:mushroom-chips-card
  chips:
    - type: conditional
        conditions:
        - entity: sensor.missing_proxmox_backups
          state_not: All backups are OK
        chip:
            type: template
            icon: mdi:backup-restore
            icon_color: red
            tap_action:
                action: more-info
            entity: sensor.missing_proxmox_backups

Force the verification of backups:

If you want to manually trigger the Node-RED flow, you have first to define a rest_command in configuration.yaml (replace [nodered_ip:port] with the actual Node-RED server address and port; default is 1880)

rest_command:
  check_proxmox_backup:
    url: "http://[nodered_ip:port]/api/backup"

then call it in an action card in lovelace: I used a Mushroom entity card which also display the backup_notifications_last_triggered sensor.

lovelace-action

- type: custom:mushroom-entity-card
  entity: sensor.backup_notifications_last_triggered
  icon: mdi:backup-restore
  name: Check Proxmox & Config Backup
  action: call-service
  service: rest_command.check_proxmox_backup
  target: {}

Step 6: Enjoy