Hello,
On 3/2/2006 8:57 PM, Thomas J. Lohman wrote:
Hi all,
we are currently evaluating packages for backing up our Windows systems.
We have anywhere between 200-250 Windows machines in our domain that need
to be backed up. I am wondering what is the general scalability of
Bacula. I know that much will depend on available disk/tape drive space
for backups, etc but I'd like to get a general sense from Bacula users
who use it to backup Windows machines how many Windows machines that they
are backing up, how many Bacula servers do you run, etc. Any information
would assist us in our decision making. Thanks much.
Ok, most of my knowledge here is extrapolated as I never worked with an
installation of that size. My office setup, also used as a Bacula
test-platform, uses really old backup hardware and could easily handle
about 20 workstation clients (estimated). The limiting factor would be
tape writing speed, spool space and network throughput, in that order.
Currently, I find that, during incremental backups workstation of more
recent speed, the file search times are what takes longest. In turn, I
could run more jobs in parallel because the SD and DIR mainly wait for
data now. With 20 clients, I'd have to schedule full backups more
sophisticated that "do all on the first wednesday of a month", but that
would be all.
Or, in other words, I'd say a decent backup server can easily handle a
number of parallel jobs in the range of a ten to several dozen. Much of
it depends on the network and on the clients, of course.
With disk storage, writing speed should not matter too much - that's
more important when you work with tapes to prevent shoe shining.
The most important thing is probably what amount of data you expect from
each machine, and how much of it changes. Assuming a short backup time
window and expecting lots of changed files from many clients might force
you to implement more complicated schedules than you'd might wish (for
example four groups of hosts to have the full backups on four separate
weekends).
Apart from these problems, I'd say that several hundred windows
workstations without the need for weekly full backups should be
something Bacula can handle.
The catalog database might become a real bottleneck, as well as managing
that number of client software installations, but these are items you
can solve by applying technology :-)
Arno
--tom
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Arno Lehmann http://www.its-lehmann.de
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