Thank you Arno, This is rather what I expected. Kern seemed to say he was using the backup scheme from the manual with several clients, so I'd still like to see how that might work. However, your setup makes sense to me and seems less fragile, so I think I'll go with it. I have a few questions that get swallowed by the listkeeper last time because I was dumb and sent from the wrong address (oops, just did it again):
If I understand you correctly, you create an pool for each level of backup and estimate how much space that will take, then pick a reasonable maximum size for each volume and divide the estimated pool size by that to get the number of volumes, rather than put each backup it its own volume like the example does. That seems good. What, then, do you use as a "reasonable" maximum volume size? I don't have a great deal of knowledge of file systems, but I recall many having trouble with files larger than 2GB or so. On the other side, I found from experience that a full backup of "Documents and Settings" on a fresh WinXP install is about 4.2GB (it grows over time, too, even if the computer is completely unused). This would mean that with a max volume size of 2GB, the single job would be split over 3 volumes. I seem to remember discussion in a recent thread that bacula can handle this, but how nicely does the database deal with it (I'm using MySQL). Are there other considerations to take into account? If so, what are your recommendations. On a personal note, I'd like to thank you for one of the best responses I've seen in the weeks I've been following this list. You were polite, on-topic, helpful, and concise. Thank you for that. ~Kyle Marsh On 6/22/07, Arno Lehmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi, > > 23.06.2007 02:03,, Kyle Marsh wrote:: > > Hello again all, > > > > I've tried looking in the manual for help, but I've found that while > > the manual is fairly comprehensive, it's not remarkably accessible; > > Quite true, unfortunately... > > > This says nothing about how they interact with volumes, but to me > > suggests that each client's backup will be counted as a job. > > It's really that simple, yes. Whatever is run by Bacula is a job, and > these jobs are the same stuff you put onto volumes (Some jobs don't > write data to volumes, though...) and count. > > > My > > question then becomes: when I want to add more clients to the example > > on the Automated Disk Backup page, how do I need to modify the > > configuration files given? Do I just need to add new Client and Job > > stanzas to each, or do I need to tweak the values in the Pool stanzas > > to reflect the number of clients (a simple multiplication)? > > You can adapt the "Maximum Volume Jobs" setting, but I wouldn't > recommend that. Just imagine one day, one of your jobs is *not* run - > your whole setup is mixed up. > > Better, IMO, is to rely on volume use times. Chose these so that each > volume is considered closed before the next turn of jobs start. For > example, when doing jobs daily at the same time, a setting of about 23 > hours would be fine. > > Personally, I prefer not bothering with these settings too much. > Instead, I pre-determine how much space I will need (or have :-) and > set up the pools with volumes of limited size and a maximum number. > > This has three advantages: I can control how much space is used, and I > don't have to worry about extra jobs, long run times, or jobs not > started. Also, Bacula up to a recent version worked much better with > files of limited size, and bay controling the volume file size I can > keep the volumes easily movable, like on DVD or FAT-formatted disks. > > Arno > > -- > Arno Lehmann > IT-Service Lehmann > www.its-lehmann.de ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
