Hello,
Now that Bacula version 2.2.0 has been released, I thought I would give you a
brief review of the direction that I see Bacula taking over the next year.
1. Of course, there will probably be a few maintenance releases that fix bugs
and add minor new features. I believe that Eric already has several
projects implemented ...
2. One major change is that as I have previously noted, I will be decreasing
the time I spend on the project from 100% to 40-50%. The rest of the time
50-60% I will be devoting to the new Bacula services endeavor, which
should be operational by the beginning of next year. At some point (a
year or two from now), I will probably return full time to the project.
As a consequence, development for the project will probably temporarily
slow down unless the contribution rate increases. However, in the long
run, the Bacula services endeavor, in my opinion, is the best and fastest
way to accelerate Bacula development.
3. Normally after a major release, we do a vote on the Projects so that the
developers will have your input as to what is important and what is not.
This does not guarantee the the developers will develop all the high
priority projects and not the low ones, but the user assigned priority is
certainly the largest factor in deciding what to work on.
For this particular release, unfortunately, the #1 project on the list was
taken by a developer who recently left the project, which means it was not
implemented. As a consequence, in my opinion, it is not absolutely
necessary to hold a new vote as there are enough high priority projects
to work on. That said, if Arno, would like to do a vote on the project
list, that is perfectly fine with me, and perhaps some of your priorities
have changed.
In any case, I have reviewed the old project list, removed the items that
were completed in 2.2.0, combined several projects that were similar, and
eliminated (put into a hold area) projects that are either developer
optimizations, not well enough explained for me to implement, projects
that I don't know how to implement, or projects that require proprietary
code, so cannot be implemented in Bacula (at the current moment).
This cut the number of projects in the voting list down from 44 to 25.
They are numbered 1-25. There are 10 projects in the hold list h1-h10.
For all the projects that I placed on hold, I made notes, so if one of
your projects was placed on hold, you will know why, and if it was placed
on hold because I didn't understand what you want or need additional
information, please feel free to supply it.
In addition, I stopped keeping track of Feature Requests some time ago
(about 3 months ago) so any Feature Requests submitted after that point
are not included in the current list.
To sum it up, I've reproduced the list below, and if you feel it is important
to vote again on the items, please discuss it with Arno, work out the details
and let me know.
Best regards,
Kern
Projects:
Bacula Projects Roadmap
Status updated 18 August 2007
After removing items completed in version
2.2.0 and renumbering
Items Completed:
Summary:
Item 1: Accurate restoration of renamed/deleted files
Item 2: Allow FD to initiate a backup
Item 3: Merge multiple backups (Synthetic Backup or Consolidation)
Item 4: Implement Catalog directive for Pool resource in Director
Item 5: Add an item to the restore option where you can select a Pool
Item 6: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
Item 7: Implement Base jobs
Item 8: Implement Copy pools
Item 9: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
Item 10: Message mailing based on backup types
Item 11: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
Item 12: Add Plug-ins to the FileSet Include statements.
Item 13: Restore only file attributes (permissions, ACL, owner, group...)
Item 14: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
Item 15: Implement more Python events and functions
Item 16: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod
times
Item 17: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
Item 18: Better control over Job execution
Item 19: Automatic disabling of devices
Item 20: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
Item 21: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
Item 22: Implement Storage daemon compression
Item 23: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management
Item 24: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
Item 25: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
Item 1: Accurate restoration of renamed/deleted files
Date: 28 November 2005
Origin: Martin Simmons (martin at lispworks dot com)
Status: Robert Nelson will implement this
What: When restoring a fileset for a specified date (including "most
recent"), Bacula should give you exactly the files and directories
that existed at the time of the last backup prior to that date.
Currently this only works if the last backup was a Full backup.
When the last backup was Incremental/Differential, files and
directories that have been renamed or deleted since the last Full
backup are not currently restored correctly. Ditto for files with
extra/fewer hard links than at the time of the last Full backup.
Why: Incremental/Differential would be much more useful if this worked.
Notes: Merging of multiple backups into a single one seems to
rely on this working, otherwise the merged backups will not be
truly equivalent to a Full backup.
Note: Kern: notes shortened. This can be done without the need for
inodes. It is essentially the same as the current Verify job,
but one additional database record must be written, which does
not need any database change.
Notes: Kern: see if we can correct restoration of directories if
replace=ifnewer is set. Currently, if the directory does not
exist, a "dummy" directory is created, then when all the files
are updated, the dummy directory is newer so the real values
are not updated.
Item 2: Allow FD to initiate a backup
Origin: Frank Volf (frank at deze dot org)
Date: 17 November 2005
Status:
What: Provide some means, possibly by a restricted console that
allows a FD to initiate a backup, and that uses the connection
established by the FD to the Director for the backup so that
a Director that is firewalled can do the backup.
Why: Makes backup of laptops much easier.
Item 3: Merge multiple backups (Synthetic Backup or Consolidation)
Origin: Marc Cousin and Eric Bollengier
Date: 15 November 2005
Status:
What: A merged backup is a backup made without connecting to the Client.
It would be a Merge of existing backups into a single backup.
In effect, it is like a restore but to the backup medium.
For instance, say that last Sunday we made a full backup. Then
all week long, we created incremental backups, in order to do
them fast. Now comes Sunday again, and we need another full.
The merged backup makes it possible to do instead an incremental
backup (during the night for instance), and then create a merged
backup during the day, by using the full and incrementals from
the week. The merged backup will be exactly like a full made
Sunday night on the tape, but the production interruption on the
Client will be minimal, as the Client will only have to send
incrementals.
In fact, if it's done correctly, you could merge all the
Incrementals into single Incremental, or all the Incrementals
and the last Differential into a new Differential, or the Full,
last differential and all the Incrementals into a new Full
backup. And there is no need to involve the Client.
Why: The benefit is that :
- the Client just does an incremental ;
- the merged backup on tape is just as a single full backup,
and can be restored very fast.
This is also a way of reducing the backup data since the old
data can then be pruned (or not) from the catalog, possibly
allowing older volumes to be recycled
Item 4: Implement Catalog directive for Pool resource in Director
Origin: Alan Davis [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 6 March 2007
Status: Submitted
What: The current behavior is for the director to create all pools
found in the configuration file in all catalogs. Add a
Catalog directive to the Pool resource to specify which
catalog to use for each pool definition.
Why: This allows different catalogs to have different pool
attributes and eliminates the side-effect of adding
pools to catalogs that don't need/use them.
Notes: Kern: I think this is relatively easy to do, and it is really
a pre-requisite to a number of the Copy pool, ... projects
that are listed here.
Item 5: Add an item to the restore option where you can select a Pool
Origin: kshatriyak at gmail dot com
Date: 1/1/2006
Status:
What: In the restore option (Select the most recent backup for a
client) it would be useful to add an option where you can limit
the selection to a certain pool.
Why: When using cloned jobs, most of the time you have 2 pools - a
disk pool and a tape pool. People who have 2 pools would like to
select the most recent backup from disk, not from tape (tape
would be only needed in emergency). However, the most recent
backup (which may just differ a second from the disk backup) may
be on tape and would be selected. The problem becomes bigger if
you have a full and differential - the most "recent" full backup
may be on disk, while the most recent differential may be on tape
(though the differential on disk may differ even only a second or
so). Bacula will complain that the backups reside on different
media then. For now the only solution now when restoring things
when you have 2 pools is to manually search for the right
job-id's and enter them by hand, which is a bit fault tolerant.
Notes: Kern: This is a nice idea. It could also be the way to support
Jobs that have been Copied (similar to migration, but not yet
implemented).
Item 6: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
Date: Nov 25, 2005
Origin: Ross Boylan <RossBoylan at stanfordalumni dot org> (edited
by Kern)
Status:
What: Provide a way for Bacula to automatically remove Volumes
from the filesystem, or optionally to truncate them.
Obviously, the Volume must be pruned prior removal.
Why: This would allow users more control over their Volumes and
prevent disk based volumes from consuming too much space.
Notes: The following two directives might do the trick:
Volume Data Retention = <time period>
Remove Volume After = <time period>
The migration project should also remove a Volume that is
migrated. This might also work for tape Volumes.
Item 7: Implement Base jobs
Date: 28 October 2005
Origin: Kern
Status:
What: A base job is sort of like a Full save except that you
will want the FileSet to contain only files that are
unlikely to change in the future (i.e. a snapshot of
most of your system after installing it). After the
base job has been run, when you are doing a Full save,
you specify one or more Base jobs to be used. All
files that have been backed up in the Base job/jobs but
not modified will then be excluded from the backup.
During a restore, the Base jobs will be automatically
pulled in where necessary.
Why: This is something none of the competition does, as far as
we know (except perhaps BackupPC, which is a Perl program that
saves to disk only). It is big win for the user, it
makes Bacula stand out as offering a unique
optimization that immediately saves time and money.
Basically, imagine that you have 100 nearly identical
Windows or Linux machine containing the OS and user
files. Now for the OS part, a Base job will be backed
up once, and rather than making 100 copies of the OS,
there will be only one. If one or more of the systems
have some files updated, no problem, they will be
automatically restored.
Notes: Huge savings in tape usage even for a single machine.
Will require more resources because the DIR must send
FD a list of files/attribs, and the FD must search the
list and compare it for each file to be saved.
Item 8: Implement Copy pools
Date: 27 November 2005
Origin: David Boyes (dboyes at sinenomine dot net)
Status:
What: I would like Bacula to have the capability to write copies
of backed-up data on multiple physical volumes selected
from different pools without transferring the data
multiple times, and to accept any of the copy volumes
as valid for restore.
Why: In many cases, businesses are required to keep offsite
copies of backup volumes, or just wish for simple
protection against a human operator dropping a storage
volume and damaging it. The ability to generate multiple
volumes in the course of a single backup job allows
customers to simple check out one copy and send it
offsite, marking it as out of changer or otherwise
unavailable. Currently, the library and magazine
management capability in Bacula does not make this process
simple.
Restores would use the copy of the data on the first
available volume, in order of Copy pool chain definition.
This is also a major scalability issue -- as the number of
clients increases beyond several thousand, and the volume
of data increases, transferring the data multiple times to
produce additional copies of the backups will become
physically impossible due to transfer speed
issues. Generating multiple copies at server side will
become the only practical option.
How: I suspect that this will require adding a multiplexing
SD that appears to be a SD to a specific FD, but 1-n FDs
to the specific back end SDs managing the primary and copy
pools. Storage pools will also need to acquire parameters
to define the pools to be used for copies.
Notes: I would commit some of my developers' time if we can agree
on the design and behavior.
Notes: I get the idea, but would like more details on the precise
syntax of the necessary directives and what they would do.
Item 9: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
Date: 15 December 2006
Origin: Gregory Brauer (greg at wildbrain dot com) and
Florian Schnabel <florian.schnabel at docufy dot de>
Status:
What: Currently, Bacula only understands how to deal with weeks of the
month or weeks of the year in schedules. This makes it impossible
to do a true weekly rotation of tapes. There will always be a
discontinuity that will require disruptive manual intervention at
least monthly or yearly because week boundaries never align with
month or year boundaries.
A solution would be to add a new syntax that defines (at least)
a start timestamp, and repetition period.
An easy option to skip a certain job on a certain date.
Why: Rotated backups done at weekly intervals are useful, and Bacula
cannot currently do them without extensive hacking.
You could then easily skip tape backups on holidays. Especially
if you got no autochanger and can only fit one backup on a tape
that would be really handy, other jobs could proceed normally
and you won't get errors that way.
Notes: Here is an example syntax showing a 3-week rotation where full
Backups would be performed every week on Saturday, and an
incremental would be performed every week on Tuesday. Each
set of tapes could be removed from the loader for the following
two cycles before coming back and being reused on the third
week. Since the execution times are determined by intervals
from a given point in time, there will never be any issues with
having to adjust to any sort of arbitrary time boundary. In
the example provided, I even define the starting schedule
as crossing both a year and a month boundary, but the run times
would be based on the "Repeat" value and would therefore happen
weekly as desired.
Schedule {
Name = "Week 1 Rotation"
#Saturday. Would run Dec 30, Jan 20, Feb 10, etc.
Run {
Options {
Type = Full
Start = 2006-12-30 01:00
Repeat = 3w
}
}
#Tuesday. Would run Jan 2, Jan 23, Feb 13, etc.
Run {
Options {
Type = Incremental
Start = 2007-01-02 01:00
Repeat = 3w
}
}
}
Schedule {
Name = "Week 2 Rotation"
#Saturday. Would run Jan 6, Jan 27, Feb 17, etc.
Run {
Options {
Type = Full
Start = 2007-01-06 01:00
Repeat = 3w
}
}
#Tuesday. Would run Jan 9, Jan 30, Feb 20, etc.
Run {
Options {
Type = Incremental
Start = 2007-01-09 01:00
Repeat = 3w
}
}
}
Schedule {
Name = "Week 3 Rotation"
#Saturday. Would run Jan 13, Feb 3, Feb 24, etc.
Run {
Options {
Type = Full
Start = 2007-01-13 01:00
Repeat = 3w
}
}
#Tuesday. Would run Jan 16, Feb 6, Feb 27, etc.
Run {
Options {
Type = Incremental
Start = 2007-01-16 01:00
Repeat = 3w
}
}
}
Notes: Kern: I have merged the previously separate project of skipping
jobs (via Schedule syntax) into this.
Item 10: Message mailing based on backup types
Origin: Evan Kaufman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: January 6, 2006
Status:
What: In the "Messages" resource definitions, allowing messages
to be mailed based on the type (backup, restore, etc.) and level
(full, differential, etc) of job that created the originating
message(s).
Why: It would, for example, allow someone's boss to be emailed
automatically only when a Full Backup job runs, so he can
retrieve the tapes for offsite storage, even if the IT dept.
doesn't (or can't) explicitly notify him. At the same time, his
mailbox wouldnt be filled by notifications of Verifies, Restores,
or Incremental/Differential Backups (which would likely be kept
onsite).
Notes: One way this could be done is through additional message types, for
example:
Messages {
# email the boss only on full system backups
Mail = [EMAIL PROTECTED] = full, !incremental, !differential, !restore,
!verify, !admin
# email us only when something breaks
MailOnError = [EMAIL PROTECTED] = all
}
Notes: Kern: This should be rather trivial to implement.
Item 11: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
Origin: Bill Moran <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 18 Dec 2006
Status:
What: Cause Bacula daemons (dir, fd, sd) to always use the ip address
specified in the [DIR|DF|SD]Addr directive as the source IP
for initiating communication.
Why: On complex networks, as well as extremely secure networks, it's
not unusual to have multiple possible routes through the network.
Often, each of these routes is secured by different policies
(effectively, firewalls allow or deny different traffic depending
on the source address)
Unfortunately, it can sometimes be difficult or impossible to
represent this in a system routing table, as the result is
excessive subnetting that quickly exhausts available IP space.
The best available workaround is to provide multiple IPs to
a single machine that are all on the same subnet. In order
for this to work properly, applications must support the ability
to bind outgoing connections to a specified address, otherwise
the operating system will always choose the first IP that
matches the required route.
Notes: Many other programs support this. For example, the following
can be configured in BIND:
query-source address 10.0.0.1;
transfer-source 10.0.0.2;
Which means queries from this server will always come from
10.0.0.1 and zone transfers will always originate from
10.0.0.2.
Item 12: Add Plug-ins to the FileSet Include statements.
Date: 28 October 2005
Origin: Kern
Status: Partially coded in 1.37 -- much more to do.
What: Allow users to specify wild-card and/or regular
expressions to be matched in both the Include and
Exclude directives in a FileSet. At the same time,
allow users to define plug-ins to be called (based on
regular expression/wild-card matching).
Why: This would give the users the ultimate ability to control
how files are backed up/restored. A user could write a
plug-in knows how to backup his Oracle database without
stopping/starting it, for example.
Item 13: Restore only file attributes (permissions, ACL, owner, group...)
Origin: Eric Bollengier
Date: 30/12/2006
Status:
What: The goal of this project is to be able to restore only rights
and attributes of files without crushing them.
Why: Who have never had to repair a chmod -R 777, or a wild update
of recursive right under Windows? At this time, you must have
enough space to restore data, dump attributes (easy with acl,
more complex with unix/windows rights) and apply them to your
broken tree. With this options, it will be very easy to compare
right or ACL over the time.
Notes: If the file is here, we skip restore and we change rights.
If the file isn't here, we can create an empty one and apply
rights or do nothing.
Item 14: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
Date: 19 Jan 2005
Origin: Chad Slater <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Status:
What: Adding a FullStorage=BigTapeLibrary in the Schedule resource
would help those of us who use different storage devices for
different
backup levels cope with the "auto-upgrade" of a backup.
Why: Assume I add several new devices to be backed up, i.e. several
hosts with 1TB RAID. To avoid tape switching hassles, incrementals
are
stored in a disk set on a 2TB RAID. If you add these devices in the
middle of the month, the incrementals are upgraded to "full"
backups,
but they try to use the same storage device as requested in the
incremental job, filling up the RAID holding the differentials. If
we
could override the Storage parameter for full and/or differential
backups, then the Full job would use the proper Storage device,
which
has more capacity (i.e. a 8TB tape library.
Item 15: Implement more Python events and functions
Date: 28 October 2005
Origin: Kern
Status:
What: Allow Python scripts to be called at more places
within Bacula and provide additional access to Bacula
internal variables.
Implement an interface for Python scripts to access the
catalog through Bacula.
Why: This will permit users to customize Bacula through
Python scripts.
Notes: Recycle event
Scratch pool event
NeedVolume event
MediaFull event
Also add a way to get a listing of currently running
jobs (possibly also scheduled jobs).
to start the appropriate job.
Item 16: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod
times
Origin: Evan Kaufman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: January 11, 2006
Status:
What: In the vein of the Wild and Regex directives in a Fileset's
Options, it would be helpful to allow a user to include or exclude
files and directories by creation or modification times.
You could factor the Exclude=yes|no option in much the same way it
affects the Wild and Regex directives. For example, you could
exclude
all files modified before a certain date:
Options {
Exclude = yes
Modified Before = ####
}
Or you could exclude all files created/modified since a certain
date:
Options {
Exclude = yes
Created Modified Since = ####
}
The format of the time/date could be done several ways, say the
number
of seconds since the epoch:
1137008553 = Jan 11 2006, 1:42:33PM # result of `date +%s`
Or a human readable date in a cryptic form:
20060111134233 = Jan 11 2006, 1:42:33PM # YYYYMMDDhhmmss
Why: I imagine a feature like this could have many uses. It would
allow a user to do a full backup while excluding the base operating
system files, so if I installed a Linux snapshot from a CD
yesterday,
I'll *exclude* all files modified *before* today. If I need to
recover the system, I use the CD I already have, plus the tape
backup.
Or if, say, a Windows client is hit by a particularly corrosive
virus, and I need to *exclude* any files created/modified *since*
the
time of infection.
Notes: Of course, this feature would work in concert with other
in/exclude rules, and wouldnt override them (or each other).
Notes: The directives I'd imagine would be along the lines of
"[Created] [Modified] [Before|Since] = <date>".
So one could compare against 'ctime' and/or 'mtime', but
ONLY 'before'
or 'since'.
Item 17: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
Date: 19 January 2006
Origin: Adam Thornton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Status:
What: Amanda has a feature whereby it estimates the space that a
differential, incremental, and full backup would take. If the
difference in space required between the scheduled level and the
next
level up is beneath some user-defined critical threshold, the backup
level is bumped to the next type. Doing this minimizes the number
of
volumes necessary during a restore, with a fairly minimal cost in
backup media space.
Why: I know at least one (quite sophisticated and smart) user
for whom the absence of this feature is a deal-breaker in terms of
using Bacula; if we had it it would eliminate the one cool thing
Amanda can do and we can't (at least, the one cool thing I know of).
Item 18: Better control over Job execution
Date: 18 August 2007
Origin: Kern
Status:
What: Bacula needs a few extra features for better Job execution:
1. A way to prevent multiple Jobs of the same name from
being scheduled at the same time (ususally happens when
a job is missed because a client is down).
2. Directives that permit easier upgrading of Job types
based on a period of time. I.e. "do a Full at least
once every 2 weeks", or "do a differential at least
once a week". If a lower level job is scheduled when
it begins to run it will be upgraded depending on
the specified criteria.
Why: Obvious.
Item 19: Automatic disabling of devices
Date: 2005-11-11
Origin: Peter Eriksson <peter at ifm.liu dot se>
Status:
What: After a configurable amount of fatal errors with a tape drive
Bacula should automatically disable further use of a certain
tape drive. There should also be "disable"/"enable" commands in
the "bconsole" tool.
Why: On a multi-drive jukebox there is a possibility of tape drives
going bad during large backups (needing a cleaning tape run,
tapes getting stuck). It would be advantageous if Bacula would
automatically disable further use of a problematic tape drive
after a configurable amount of errors has occurred.
An example: I have a multi-drive jukebox (6 drives, 380+ slots)
where tapes occasionally get stuck inside the drive. Bacula will
notice that the "mtx-changer" command will fail and then fail
any backup jobs trying to use that drive. However, it will still
keep on trying to run new jobs using that drive and fail -
forever, and thus failing lots and lots of jobs... Since we have
many drives Bacula could have just automatically disabled
further use of that drive and used one of the other ones
instead.
Item 20: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
Origin: Dmitriy Pinchukov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 16 August 2006
Status:
What: When I do update -> Volume parameters -> All Volumes
from Pool, then I have to select pools one by one. I'd like
console to have an option like "0: All Pools" in the list of
defined pools.
Why: I have many pools and therefore unhappy with manually
updating each of them using update -> Volume parameters -> All
Volumes from Pool -> pool #.
Item 21: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
Origin: Mark Bergman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue Aug 22 17:13:39 EDT 2006
Status:
What: The "stat clients" command doesn't include any detail on when
the active backup jobs were launched.
Why: Including the timestamp would make it much easier to decide whether
a job is running properly.
Notes: It may be helpful to have the output from "stat clients" formatted
more like that from "stat dir" (and other commands), in a column
format. The per-client information that's currently shown (level,
client name, JobId, Volume, pool, device, Files, etc.) is good, but
somewhat hard to parse (both programmatically and visually),
particularly when there are many active clients.
Item 22: Implement Storage daemon compression
Date: 18 December 2006
Origin: Vadim A. Umanski , e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Status:
What: The ability to compress backup data on the SD receiving data
instead of doing that on client sending data.
Why: The need is practical. I've got some machines that can send
data to the network 4 or 5 times faster than compressing
them (I've measured that). They're using fast enough SCSI/FC
disk subsystems but rather slow CPUs (ex. UltraSPARC II).
And the backup server has got a quite fast CPUs (ex. Dual P4
Xeons) and quite a low load. When you have 20, 50 or 100 GB
of raw data - running a job 4 to 5 times faster - that
really matters. On the other hand, the data can be
compressed 50% or better - so losing twice more space for
disk backup is not good at all. And the network is all mine
(I have a dedicated management/provisioning network) and I
can get as high bandwidth as I need - 100Mbps, 1000Mbps...
That's why the server-side compression feature is needed!
Notes:
Item 23: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management
Date: 8 November 2005, November 11, 2005
Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton at sinenomine dot net>,
Arno Lehmann <al at its-lehmann dot de>
Status:
What: Make Bacula manage tape life cycle information, tape reuse
times and drive cleaning cycles.
Why: All three parts of this project are important when operating
backups.
We need to know which tapes need replacement, and we need to
make sure the drives are cleaned when necessary. While many
tape libraries and even autoloaders can handle all this
automatically, support by Bacula can be helpful for smaller
(older) libraries and single drives. Limiting the number of
times a tape is used might prevent tape errors when using
tapes until the drives can't read it any more. Also, checking
drive status during operation can prevent some failures (as I
[Arno] had to learn the hard way...)
Notes: First, Bacula could (and even does, to some limited extent)
record tape and drive usage. For tapes, the number of mounts,
the amount of data, and the time the tape has actually been
running could be recorded. Data fields for Read and Write
time and Number of mounts already exist in the catalog (I'm
not sure if VolBytes is the sum of all bytes ever written to
that volume by Bacula). This information can be important
when determining which media to replace. The ability to mark
Volumes as "used up" after a given number of write cycles
should also be implemented so that a tape is never actually
worn out. For the tape drives known to Bacula, similar
information is interesting to determine the device status and
expected life time: Time it's been Reading and Writing, number
of tape Loads / Unloads / Errors. This information is not yet
recorded as far as I [Arno] know. A new volume status would
be necessary for the new state, like "Used up" or "Worn out".
Volumes with this state could be used for restores, but not
for writing. These volumes should be migrated first (assuming
migration is implemented) and, once they are no longer needed,
could be moved to a Trash pool.
The next step would be to implement a drive cleaning setup.
Bacula already has knowledge about cleaning tapes. Once it
has some information about cleaning cycles (measured in drive
run time, number of tapes used, or calender days, for example)
it can automatically execute tape cleaning (with an
autochanger, obviously) or ask for operator assistance loading
a cleaning tape.
The final step would be to implement TAPEALERT checks not only
when changing tapes and only sending the information to the
administrator, but rather checking after each tape error,
checking on a regular basis (for example after each tape
file), and also before unloading and after loading a new tape.
Then, depending on the drives TAPEALERT state and the known
drive cleaning state Bacula could automatically schedule later
cleaning, clean immediately, or inform the operator.
Implementing this would perhaps require another catalog change
and perhaps major changes in SD code and the DIR-SD protocol,
so I'd only consider this worth implementing if it would
actually be used or even needed by many people.
Implementation of these projects could happen in three distinct
sub-projects: Measuring Tape and Drive usage, retiring
volumes, and handling drive cleaning and TAPEALERTs.
Item 24: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
Date: 27 November 2005
Origin: Ove Risberg (Ove.Risberg at octocode dot com)
Status:
What: I want the file daemon to start multiple threads for a backup
job so the fastest possible backup can be made.
The file daemon could parse the FileSet information and start
one thread for each File entry located on a separate
filesystem.
A confiuration option in the job section should be used to
enable or disable this feature. The confgutration option could
specify the maximum number of threads in the file daemon.
If the theads could spool the data to separate spool files
the restore process will not be much slower.
Why: Multiple concurrent backups of a large fileserver with many
disks and controllers will be much faster.
Item 25: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
Date: Nov. 24/2005
Origin: Ray Pengelly [ray at biomed dot queensu dot ca
Status:
What: The ability to archive data to storage based on certain parameters
such as age, size, or location. Once the data has been written to
storage and logged it is then pruned from the originating
filesystem. Note! We are talking about user's files and not
Bacula Volumes.
Why: This would allow fully automatic storage management which becomes
useful for large datastores. It would also allow for auto-staging
from one media type to another.
Example 1) Medical imaging needs to store large amounts of data.
They decide to keep data on their servers for 6 months and then put
it away for long term storage. The server then finds all files
older than 6 months writes them to tape. The files are then removed
from the server.
Example 2) All data that hasn't been accessed in 2 months could be
moved from high-cost, fibre-channel disk storage to a low-cost
large-capacity SATA disk storage pool which doesn't have as quick of
access time. Then after another 6 months (or possibly as one
storage pool gets full) data is migrated to Tape.
========== Items on put hold by Kern ============================
Item h1: Split documentation
Origin: Maxx <maxxatworkat gmail dot com>
Date: 27th July 2006
Status: Approved, awaiting implementation
What: Split documentation in several books
Why: Bacula manual has now more than 600 pages, and looking for
implementation details is getting complicated. I think
it would be good to split the single volume in two or
maybe three parts:
1) Introduction, requirements and tutorial, typically
are useful only until first installation time
2) Basic installation and configuration, with all the
gory details about the directives supported 3)
Advanced Bacula: testing, troubleshooting, GUI and
ancillary programs, security managements, scripting,
etc.
Notes: This is a project that needs to be done, and will be implemented,
but it is really a developer issue of timing, and does not
needed to be included in the voting.
Item h2: Implement support for stacking arbitrary stream filters, sinks.
Date: 23 November 2006
Origin: Landon Fuller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Status: Planning. Assigned to landonf.
What: Implement support for the following:
- Stacking arbitrary stream filters (eg, encryption, compression,
sparse data handling))
- Attaching file sinks to terminate stream filters (ie, write out
the resultant data to a file)
- Refactor the restoration state machine accordingly
Why: The existing stream implementation suffers from the following:
- All state (compression, encryption, stream restoration), is
global across the entire restore process, for all streams. There
are
multiple entry and exit points in the restoration state machine,
and
thus multiple places where state must be allocated, deallocated,
initialized, or reinitialized. This results in exceptional
complexity
for the author of a stream filter.
- The developer must enumerate all possible combinations of filters
and stream types (ie, win32 data with encryption, without
encryption,
with encryption AND compression, etc).
Notes: This feature request only covers implementing the stream filters/
sinks, and refactoring the file daemon's restoration implementation
accordingly. If I have extra time, I will also rewrite the backup
implementation. My intent in implementing the restoration first is
to
solve pressing bugs in the restoration handling, and to ensure that
the new restore implementation handles existing backups correctly.
I do not plan on changing the network or tape data structures to
support defining arbitrary stream filters, but supporting that
functionality is the ultimate goal.
Assistance with either code or testing would be fantastic.
Notes: Kern: this project has a lot of merit, and we need to do it, but
it is really an issue for developers rather than a new feature
for users, so I have removed it from the voting list, but kept it
here, but at some point, it will be implemented.
Item h3: Filesystem watch triggered backup.
Date: 31 August 2006
Origin: Jesper Krogh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Status:
What: With inotify and similar filesystem triggeret notification
systems is it possible to have the file-daemon to monitor
filesystem changes and initiate backup.
Why: There are 2 situations where this is nice to have.
1) It is possible to get a much finer-grained backup than
the fixed schedules used now.. A file created and deleted
a few hours later, can automatically be caught.
2) The introduced load on the system will probably be
distributed more even on the system.
Notes: This can be combined with configration that specifies
something like: "at most every 15 minutes or when changes
consumed XX MB".
Kern Notes: I would rather see this implemented by an external program
that monitors the Filesystem changes, then uses the console
Item h4: Directive/mode to backup only file changes, not entire file
Date: 11 November 2005
Origin: Joshua Kugler <joshua dot kugler at uaf dot edu>
Marek Bajon <mbajon at bimsplus dot com dot pl>
Status:
What: Currently when a file changes, the entire file will be backed up in
the next incremental or full backup. To save space on the tapes
it would be nice to have a mode whereby only the changes to the
file would be backed up when it is changed.
Why: This would save lots of space when backing up large files such as
logs, mbox files, Outlook PST files and the like.
Notes: This would require the usage of disk-based volumes as comparing
files would not be feasible using a tape drive.
Notes: Kern: I don't know how to implement this. Put on hold until someone
provides a detailed implementation plan.
Item h5: Implement multiple numeric backup levels as supported by dump
Date: 3 April 2006
Origin: Daniel Rich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Status:
What: Dump allows specification of backup levels numerically instead of
just
"full", "incr", and "diff". In this system, at any given level, all
files are backed up that were were modified since the last backup of
a
higher level (with 0 being the highest and 9 being the lowest). A
level 0 is therefore equivalent to a full, level 9 an incremental,
and
the levels 1 through 8 are varying levels of differentials. For
bacula's sake, these could be represented as "full", "incr", and
"diff1", "diff2", etc.
Why: Support of multiple backup levels would provide for more advanced
backup
rotation schemes such as "Towers of Hanoi". This would allow better
flexibility in performing backups, and can lead to shorter recover
times.
Notes: Legato Networker supports a similar system with full, incr, and 1-9
as
levels.
Notes: Kern: I don't see the utility of this, and it would be a *huge*
modification to existing code.
Item h6: Implement NDMP protocol support
Origin: Alan Davis
Date: 06 March 2007
Status:
What: Network Data Management Protocol is implemented by a number of
NAS filer vendors to enable backups using third-party
software.
Why: This would allow NAS filer backups in Bacula without incurring
the overhead of NFS or SBM/CIFS.
Notes: Further information is available:
http://www.ndmp.org
http://www.ndmp.org/wp/wp.shtml
http://www.traakan.com/ndmjob/index.html
There are currently no viable open-source NDMP
implementations. There is a reference SDK and example
app available from ndmp.org but it has problems
compiling on recent Linux and Solaris OS'. The ndmjob
reference implementation from Traakan is known to
compile on Solaris 10.
Notes: Kern: I am not at all in favor of this until NDMP becomes
an Open Standard or until there are Open Source libraries
that interface to it.
Item h7: Commercial database support
Origin: Russell Howe <russell_howe dot wreckage dot org>
Date: 26 July 2006
Status:
What: It would be nice for the database backend to support more
databases. I'm thinking of SQL Server at the moment, but I guess
Oracle,
DB2, MaxDB, etc are all candidates. SQL Server would presumably be
implemented using FreeTDS or maybe an ODBC library?
Why: We only really have one database server, which is MS SQL Server
2000. Maintaining a second one for the backup software (we grew out
of
SQLite, which I liked, but which didn't work so well with our
database
size). We don't really have a machine with the resources to run
postgres, and would rather only maintain a single DBMS. We're stuck
with
SQL Server because pretty much all the company's custom applications
(written by consultants) are locked into SQL Server 2000. I can
imagine
this scenario is fairly common, and it would be nice to use the
existing
properly specced database server for storing Bacula's catalog,
rather
than having to run a second DBMS.
Notes: This might be nice, but someone other than me will probably need to
implement it, and at the moment, proprietary code cannot legally be
mixed with Bacula GPLed code. This would be possible only providing
the vendors provide GPLed (or OpenSource) interface code.
Item h8: Incorporation of XACML2/SAML2 parsing
Date: 19 January 2006
Origin: Adam Thornton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Status: Blue sky
What: XACML is "eXtensible Access Control Markup Language" and
"SAML is the "Security Assertion Markup Language"--an XML standard
for making statements about identity and authorization. Having
these
would give us a framework to approach ACLs in a generic manner, and
in a way flexible enough to support the four major sorts of ACLs I
see as a concern to Bacula at this point, as well as (probably) to
deal with new sorts of ACLs that may appear in the future.
Why: Bacula is beginning to need to back up systems with ACLs
that do not map cleanly onto traditional Unix permissions. I see
four sets of ACLs--in general, mutually incompatible with one
another--that we're going to need to deal with. These are: NTFS
ACLs, POSIX ACLs, NFSv4 ACLS, and AFS ACLS. (Some may question the
relevance of AFS; AFS is one of Sine Nomine's core consulting
businesses, and having a reputable file-level backup and restore
technology for it (as Tivoli is probably going to drop AFS support
soon since IBM no longer supports AFS) would be of huge benefit to
our customers; we'd most likely create the AFS support at Sine
Nomine
for inclusion into the Bacula (and perhaps some changes to the
OpenAFS volserver) core code.)
Now, obviously, Bacula already handles NTFS just fine. However, I
think there's a lot of value in implementing a generic ACL model, so
that it's easy to support whatever particular instances of ACLs come
down the pike: POSIX ACLS (think SELinux) and NFSv4 are the obvious
things arriving in the Linux world in a big way in the near future.
XACML, although overcomplicated for our needs, provides this
framework, and we should be able to leverage other people's
implementations to minimize the amount of work *we* have to do to
get
a generic ACL framework. Basically, the costs of implementation are
high, but they're largely both external to Bacula and already sunk.
Notes: As you indicate this is a bit of "blue sky" or in other words,
at the moment, it is a bit esoteric to consider for Bacula.
Item h9: Archive data
Date: 15/5/2006
Origin: calvin streeting calvin at absentdream dot com
Status:
What: The abilty to archive to media (dvd/cd) in a uncompressed format
for dead filing (archiving not backing up)
Why: At work when jobs are finished and moved off of the main file
servers (raid based systems) onto a simple Linux file server (ide
based
system) so users can find old information without contacting the IT
dept.
So this data dosn't realy change it only gets added to,
But it also needs backing up. At the moment it takes
about 8 hours to back up our servers (working data) so
rather than add more time to existing backups i am trying
to implement a system where we backup the acrhive data to
cd/dvd these disks would only need to be appended to
(burn only new/changed files to new disks for off site
storage). basialy understand the differnce between
achive data and live data.
Notes: Scan the data and email me when it needs burning divide
into predefined chunks keep a recored of what is on what
disk make me a label (simple php->mysql=>pdf stuff) i
could do this bit ability to save data uncompresed so
it can be read in any other system (future proof data)
save the catalog with the disk as some kind of menu
system
Notes: Kern: I don't understand this item, and in any case, if it
is specific to DVD/CDs, which we do not recommend using,
it is unlikely to be implemented except as a user
submitted patch.
Item h10: Clustered file-daemons
Origin: Alan Brown ajb2 at mssl dot ucl dot ac dot uk
Date: 24 July 2006
Status:
What: A "virtual" filedaemon, which is actually a cluster of real ones.
Why: In the case of clustered filesystems (SAN setups, GFS, or OCFS2,
etc)
multiple machines may have access to the same set of filesystems
For performance reasons, one may wish to initate backups from
several of these machines simultaneously, instead of just using
one backup source for the common clustered filesystem.
For obvious reasons, normally backups of $A-FD/$PATH and
B-FD/$PATH are treated as different backup sets. In this case
they are the same communal set.
Likewise when restoring, it would be easier to just specify
one of the cluster machines and let bacula decide which to use.
This can be faked to some extent using DNS round robin entries
and a virtual IP address, however it means "status client" will
always give bogus answers. Additionally there is no way of
spreading the load evenly among the servers.
What is required is something similar to the storage daemon
autochanger directives, so that Bacula can keep track of
operating backups/restores and direct new jobs to a "free"
client.
Notes: Kern: I don't understand the request enough to be able to
implement it. A lot more design detail should be presented
before voting on this project.
========== Already implemented ================================
Item n: make changing "spooldata=yes|no" possible for
manual/interactive jobs
Origin: Marc Schiffbauer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 12 April 2007)
Status: Already implemented by Eric
What: Make it possible to modify the spooldata option
for a job when being run from within the console.
Currently it is possible to modify the backup level
and the spooldata setting in a Schedule resource.
It is also possible to modify the backup level when using
the "run" command in the console.
But it is currently not possible to to the same
with "spooldata=yes|no" like:
run job=MyJob level=incremental spooldata=yes
Why: In some situations it would be handy to be able to switch
spooldata on or off for interactive/manual jobs based on
which data the admin expects or how fast the LAN/WAN
connection currently is.
Notes: ./.
============= Empty Feature Request form ===========
Item n: One line summary ...
Date: Date submitted
Origin: Name and email of originator.
Status:
What: More detailed explanation ...
Why: Why it is important ...
Notes: Additional notes or features (omit if not used)
============== End Feature Request form ==============
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