Bill Moran wrote: > In response to Chris Hoogendyk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > >> Christopher Derr wrote: >> >>> Greetings, >>> >>> We're thinking of using Bacula as our disk-to-disk solution for backing >>> user and research data. I'm still reading up on it, but I haven't found >>> the answer to the following question. >>> >>> Called pooling in BackupPC and deduplication by industry, I've been >>> trying to find out if Bacula has it. A search of the site for either >>> word brings up nothing relevant. Does the current version of Bacula >>> have the ability to store backups of the same file as one file with links? >>> >>> For example: If Bob and Joan both have the exact same 2 MB PDF in their >>> home directory, a normal backup would store it twice for a total of 4 >>> MB. What deduplication does, is store the file once in a central >>> location, and then store links from the individual backups to the file. >>> If 100 people have this same file, rather than taking up 200 MB of >>> space, it still only takes up 2 MB. Unique, I believe, to disk-to-disk >>> backups. >>> >> Nope. >> >> I'm not aware of any open source backup software that does that. Amanda >> doesn't do it either. It's non-trivial and has been discussed on the >> Bacula list a couple of times. Not sure what the key word would be to >> search for it. >> > > BackupPC does it: > http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ > > But their architecture was designed from the ground up to support it.
Ok, I guess there is an open source solution that does deduplication. However, if you check out their site and their FAQ entry on "limitations" (http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/limitations.html), I don't think I would ever try to rely on them. They just aren't ready for prime time yet. They only backup a Windows PC through samba, cannot get acl's, cannot get locked files, and cannot be used to recover. You have to recover the PC with some other tool and then recover user files with BackupPC. Their FAQ presumes that linux backups with tar ought to be recoverable, but "I haven't tried it." Excuse me? It's a mantra for users of backup software to always try a recovery to prove to themselves that their backup software is working. And yet here we have the home site of the software, in the FAQ, saying "I haven't tried it." They don't do tapes, and, in spite of deduplication (which they call pooling), they can't deal with deletions or moving files from one directory to another. So their "clever pooling scheme" doesn't solve enough of the issues to make their software a compelling alternative, or even a possible alternative, except for maybe a home user who only wants personal files backed up to another disk drive. Sorry for the rant. It's just that I'd never taken a look through their web site before. I've frequently seen comments on linuxquestions.org offering BackupPC as a solution to people who ask about backing up. I just hadn't paid much attention one way or the other. I'm sure there's a place for them, but it's not in the enterprise for the foreseeable future. --------------- Chris Hoogendyk - O__ ---- Systems Administrator c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center ~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------- Erdös 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
