Hello, On 11/30/2006 9:24 PM, Per Andreas Buer wrote: > Hi. > > We are considering migrating to Bacula (from what we have seen - we are > impressed!) and a have a question or two I hope you might help me answer. > > Amanda has a feature I really like. When the correct tape is missing, > broken or full Amanda just spools everything. If you have a large spool, > backup can run for days without hick up. So, when one has fixed the > tape, one just runs amflush and all is well. How does Bacula react to > having its tape drive missing?
Badly :-) Currently, Bacula will only run a job if the final storage volume is available at the time the job starts. The kind of staging Amanda does is not implemented in Bacula. The upcoming solution to this is to implement a disk-to-disk-to-tape scenario where you first back up to disk, and later migrate jobs to tape. This is in the development version, and I suspect that the final version 1.40 will be released this year. > > If I need an urgent restore whilst backup is running - what are the > consequences of aborting a backup run. The job you abort will need to be re-run. > Can Bacula handle several tape drives? Yes. > Will I be able to run parallel > backup and restore? Yes, but... > As LTO3 has a really, really high throughput > (80MB/s, if I recall) I don't see much chance in using both drives in > parallel. It will work, but in most cases will be severely slowed down. As you note, the throughput of one LTO-3 drive alone is enough to saturate todays computers bus bandwith. You can push the limit by using the right hardware, but it will be hard to find a (more or less) normal server that can handle moving data from the network to LTO-3 and from another LTO-3 drive to the network simultaneously. You'll most likely need higher-end server systems with multiple PCI-X or PCIe busses and lots of memory, CPU, bus and network bandwidth. When I wanted to be prepared for restores during backup runs, I'd reserve a drive in a multi-drive autochanger for manual operations like restores, and / or be ready to abort or hold backup operations during important restore jobs. Personally, I prefer to have a workstation equipped with a single drive and a configured SD available for these sorts of things. You'll have to swap tapes manually, but you will have a dedicated machine for the restore job. > > Any other thoughts from users who have migrated from Arkeia to Bacula > would be very welcome. Do it. My little experience with Arkeia was one of the main reasons I moved to Bacula. > > TIA > > Per. Arno -- IT-Service Lehmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] Arno Lehmann http://www.its-lehmann.de ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
