remote-backups.com launches edge locations for faster Proxmox backups over high-latency links

remote-backups.com today announced the launch of edge locations, a new infrastructure layer that accelerates Proxmox Backup Server backups for customers whose servers are far from the company's Frankfurt datacenters.

The problem

Proxmox Backup Server backups over wide-area networks are significantly slower than the available bandwidth allows. Two independent bottlenecks cause this:

1. Protocol serialization: PBS uploads chunks one at a time, waiting for a server acknowledgment before sending the next. On a 150 ms round-trip link, this caps throughput at roughly 60 Mbit/s regardless of available bandwidth.
2. TCP congestion window limits: A single TCP connection cannot fill a fast, high-latency link. Linux kernel defaults limit a single stream to around 200–250 Mbit/s on a 150 ms path.

Combined, these two factors mean customers in North America backing up to Frankfurt typically see 44–67 Mbit/s on links capable of over 1 Gbit/s.

How edge locations work

An edge location is a point of presence deployed close to the customer's servers. It runs two components:

• Write accelerator: A protocol-aware PBS proxy that accepts chunk uploads, writes them to local NVMe storage, and immediately acknowledges them to the client. Chunks are forwarded to the datacenter asynchronously with up to 64 parallel uploads. Consistency-critical operations (index closes, backup finishes) block until all pending chunks are confirmed stored.
• TCP multiplexer: Splits the single connection between edge and datacenter into 8 parallel TCP streams, each with its own congestion window. This overcomes the single-connection throughput ceiling.

Together, these components increased measured throughput from 44–67 Mbit/s to 573 Mbit/s on a test path between Beauharnois, Quebec and Frankfurt — an 8–13x improvement.

Setup

Customers connect through an edge location by changing a single field: the remote hostname in their Proxmox Backup Server configuration. Credentials, encryption keys, datastore names, and all other settings remain unchanged.

Pricing

Edge locations are included at no extra cost with every plan.

Availability

The first edge location is live in Beauharnois, Quebec, serving customers in Canada, US East, and US Central. Additional locations will be deployed based on customer demand.

Data handling

Backup data is buffered on the edge node's local NVMe storage only during the active backup session. All chunks are forwarded to the datacenter in real time. Durable storage remains exclusively in the main datacenters. No customer data persists on the edge node after a backup completes.

For more information, visit remote-backups.com or read the full technical breakdown at remote-backups.com/blog/introducing-edge-locations.