In the message dated: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 15:17:01 EDT,
The pithy ruminations from Chris Hoogendyk on
<Re: [Bacula-users] Deduplication?> were:
=>
=>
=> 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?
[SNIP!]
=> >
=> > 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.
Yes.
=>
=> 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
So, you've never used the software, spent a few minutes reading their FAQ, and
that's enough to completely dismiss their software...
I'm speaking as someone who used BackupPC (personally, for 5 machines, and
professionally, for ~20 servers) for a few years.
Given it's limitiations, which are clearly documented, it's a very stable,
functional, and useful product. I wouldn't say that it's a direct competitor or
alternative to Bacula--the two packages play in the same space, but start from
very different philosophies.
BackupPC requires much less administrative overhead than Bacula, provides a
better user interface, and makes much more effective use of disk resources. It
does the "synthetic" backups and "deduplication" that Bacula does not, and
doesn't require a database for those functions. The web interface is easy to
use, and there are fewer failure modes to deal with. BackupPC is terrific at
maximizing resources in an environment where there's a lot of file duplication,
such as a workgroup with a lot of desktop machines, or an enterprise that does
snapshot backups every few hours.
I'd be very confident recommending BackupPC for people who want on-line (disk
based) backups only, who do not need extensive archiving or bare-metal
restores, and who have limited resources for administration and hardware.
Actually, that's a good description for a huge market share (homes, small
offices, small work groups within larger companies, academic departments and
research groups, etc.). Most people need backups to recover the odd file that
was deleted accidently, or sometimes to revert to a previous version of a
document. Doing a bare-metal restore (while very important) is uncommon and
complex--often (especially with Windows), the recommendation would be to
reinstall the OS and applications, then restore data.
If you understand their strengths and limitations, either Bacula or BackupPC
could be an excellent--or very poor--choice for a specific environment.
=> 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."
You're conflating the little-used ability of making a tar archive of the entire
BackupPC pool (which is actually very difficult, due to extensive use of hard
links) with BackupPCs well proven and robust ability to restore data to
individual clients.
=>
=> 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.
I strongly disagree, as you can probably tell. Their software is an
alternative. It's not at all a direct competitor to Bacula, and lacks some
features that I see as very important in my current environment.
=>
=> 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
Then why offer the rant, with such a cursory examination of the product?
=> 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.
Absolutely. BackupPC is not an "enterprise" product, as that's become defined.
That doesn't mean that it lacks useful features, ideas, and is not a better
choice than Bacula for some situations.
That said, I wouldn't consider using it here at my current work, just as I
probably wouldn't recommend Bacula to someone looking to backup two or three
home machines to a small disk array.
=>
=>
=> ---------------
=>
=> Chris Hoogendyk
=>
=> -
=> O__ ---- Systems Administrator
=> c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
=> (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
=> ~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst
=>
=> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
=>
=> ---------------
=>
=> Erdös 4
=>
----
Mark Bergman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
System Administrator
Section of Biomedical Image Analysis 215-662-7310
Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania
http://pgpkeys.pca.dfn.de:11371/pks/lookup?search=mark.bergman%40.uphs.upenn.edu
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