Nick, I use a similar approach with one significant difference and a few small ones.
I have have periodic (daily and weekly) pools and write (in parallel jobs for all the clients) all the backups to one volume to save disk space and reduce the management complexity. This media goes off site. Then, I have a separate set of jobs at a lower priority, scheduled to run later, that write to another media for on site storage. This can be an SD resource on a local hard drive volume. I use a disk rack with a few TB, but anything with enough space will work. I have my volumes configured to limit the size of each (thanks to a post I saw from Kern) as they are used, and they get reused when the jobs expire. The priority thing keeps the second set of jobs from overlapping with the first set. I found that I got radically different (differential) results when both FD jobs were running on a client at the same time. I don't know how/why, but this seems to get me the results I want - two relatively similar copies of the same data. All my on site jobs expire after 2 weeks. Off site is kept for 4 weeks (daily) or 52 weeks (weekly). Of course, you'll adjust retention for your needs. FWIW. On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 22:40 +1100, Nick Withers wrote: > G'day guys, > > Just trying to design a backup solution using Bacula for a small > company I work for and would appreciate some help with a few issues. > This email may be rather long, so certainly appreciate anyone taking > the time to read it, let alone offer any insight they may have! > > The main problem I'm having is that I want backups both on-site (for > restoring files users accidentally deleted and other relatively > trivial matters) and off-site (for when the site gets stepped on by > Godzilla). Methinks I'm after (upcoming?) "copy job" magic... :-) > > The company currently has two 200-odd GB USB-accessible HDDs and five > 110-odd GB USB accessible HDDs. I'd like to avoid having to acquire > any further hardware at this point and think that this should be > enough to hold the required data anyway, at least following the scheme > outlined below. > > My current idea runs like this: > - A monthly full backup of each machine to one of the 200 GB drives > (each machine uses it's own full backup pool) > - This drive is then taken off-site and the other 200 GB drive put > in its place for the next monthly full backup > - Weekday night-run differential backups to one of the 110 GB > drives (each machine uses it's own differential backup pool) > - This drive is then taken off-site and the 110 GB drive for the > next differential backup is put in its place > > This would mean that with the just the full backup and the previous > day's differential backup drives from off-site, the previous day's > state could be completely restored. Bet I've missed some really > obviously nicer way of achieving this or something similar though! I > don't believe that too much data will be changing on a daily basis, > so hopefully the increasingly large differential backups throughout > the month won't be a problem. > > Now I also want to be able to access the backups on-site, without > having to drag in off-site backup drives. I'd prefer to do the > actual backup to the removable drives in the first instance as > these are the "critical" ones and I'd like the job(s) to fail in > the case of full removable drives. I've thought of: > - Copying the backup volumes from the removable drives to a local > location following a backup. Problems / potential problems: > - Have to know the names of the relevant volumes on the removable > media > - Would really like to be able to specify restoring from the > relocated volumes in a nice manner, rather than those on the > removable media > - Migrating the volumes from the removable media to a local > location following a backup. Problems / potential problems: > - Would want to be able to easily use the removable-drive volumes > if the local ones go AWOL (e.g., Godzilla...) > - Would want matching volume names on local and removable > locations so that volumes are easily identifiable > - Would want volume recycling to occur on both locations > > I've attached (slightly sanitised) Director and Software Director > config files for the current setup (very much alpha), in case this > helps. > > Anyone have any ideas? Should I just hang on until "copy job" saves > everything? Am I being profoundly stupid in one / many ways? > > By the way, the system's all-Windows and screaming along very nicely > using 2.0.2 - huzzah! > > Any and all thoughts appreciated! > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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
