Hi, 28.04.2009 02:31, Steven Palm wrote: > On Apr 27, 2009, at 2:00 PM, Arno Lehmann wrote: >> I'd suggest to just back up that pool with a very plain setup. >> Accurate backups will be good, probably. > > My only questions is, given it's extensive use of hardlinks to > minimize the pool size, if there anything special needed when backing > it up to tape to minimize storage space on tape much like is done on > disk.
No. All I know about hard links is that Bacula needs some space for the necessary bookkeeping, but storing those on disk is nothing very exciting. It's more or less just like a hard link on disk - just a pointer to a full version of the file in question. > I guess I need to investigate this a bit more... I guess I was > thinking that surely someone had actually done it before and was > hoping for a "tested" answer. But maybe not, because if someone has > gone through the process to understand Bacula enough to use it, they > probably don't use BackupPC any longer... :) Possible :-) Though, actually, I have a customer who's collecting data from a number of distributed servers with rsync or similar and backs up that pool of stuff with Bacula. >> Should work, though I haven't used virtual fulls yet. Especially >> regarding pool and volume management, virtual fulls can be a bit of a >> challenge - for simplicity, I'd suggest to use a more straightforward >> setup at least to get started with Bacula. You can refine your >> procedures later on anyway. > > I think it is going to be complex on the setup, but hopefully simple > for the usage... That's the idea, yes. > If it works properly, then you'd pretty much have > just one "full" backup for each system, because after a successful > incremental or differential to update things, it would roll back into > a current "full". I just think it would probably require some > scripted stuff after every backup to handle this (or nightly), and > probably shuffling things from pool to pool or volume to volume to > keep it straight. Just my point - I need to get a bit more experience with this (and the developers are considering a change to the logic in Bacula, so I decided it wasn't worth extensive experimenting yet). > That's why it's puzzling to think about as I am just > trying to learn the basics. You are quite right, I need to get a > simple system in place first. :) > >>> The notes on page 10 of the Concepts document talk about the Copy >>> job, and give a sample config, but I think part of it is missing... >>> It mentions a "Storage = vtl" without any storage definition. I >>> suppose if I were familiar with bacula, I'd know what to put here, >>> but >>> I do not. >> Ignore it for now, it will become clear once you've got a real Bacula >> setup. > > I asked because I thought that would be required to eventually get > where I want to go. Well, that's just an arbitrary storage device definition. Nothing extraordinary involved. > The real problem here is the fact that until I get this working, we > will have no backup mechanism in place, so I'm not really keen on the > idea of fiddling around for a long time to learn. I wish I had the > luxury of setting up a test environment for a few weeks or months, but > I can't afford that. However, I think the things I am trying to use > are fairly new additions to Bacula, so maybe it's not likely anyone > has a tested implementation to share configs from. At least that's the case for me. Others I know about are using migration, copy and virtual fulls for a while already, and I don't think there were more complaints than was to be expected whan using beta software. > It makes me nervous to trust only a disk backup here without being > able to dump to tape, especially since I can't take the disk-based > server offsite. :) That's the spirit... unfortunately, among many users, disk backups are considered the best thing today, though the advantages of being able to remove a tape and store it wherever you like should be quite clear. > Also, I am accustomed to having a set of tapes > daily, or weekly at the worst case, to take offsite that contain full > backups. I'm having a hard time picturing how differentials and > incrementals all fit together into the picture of how we've done > things and cover us with offsite daily/weekly dumps. I think it's really more simple than you expect... - Do backups to disk with whatever cycles you like. For simplicity, use only one pool. - Create a virtual full in a disk based pool. - Copy that job to tape, to another pool. - Move the virtual full volume(s) to the original backup pool. - Start from the beginning. As far as I know, there is some scripting required. I'm pretty sure I could implement it in a few days (including extensive testing), but I don't have a proven solution yet. ... > It may take months before I understand that. :) Ok, so forget this for now. > I'm sure it's > elegant, but again, I've always only rotated the backups so that daily > (M-Th), Weekly (F, unique for each week) and monthly tapes were all > full dumps so that any one could be taken offsite and have a full set > of data. That is probably why I am fighting all the stuff documented, > because I don't want to deal with all the incrementals/differentials > when it comes to the daily tape storage... For disk storage, that > would be great, but when I take a tape set out of the drive I want it > to be complete. See above - I think the solution isn't overly complex. But, given your concerns with roaming users, I would probably suggest doing an rsync-based (or BackupPPC-based) backup to disk first, and just create full tape backups of that data as needed. A more detailed investigation, looking at data set sizes, available bandwidth, backup windows, disk capacity etc. would be needed before I set up something like this, though. Arno > > Thanks, really, I appreciate it! > > Steve > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Register Now & Save for Velocity, the Web Performance & Operations > Conference from O'Reilly Media. Velocity features a full day of > expert-led, hands-on workshops and two days of sessions from industry > leaders in dedicated Performance & Operations tracks. Use code vel09scf > and Save an extra 15% before 5/3. http://p.sf.net/sfu/velocityconf > _______________________________________________ > Bacula-users mailing list > Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users > -- Arno Lehmann IT-Service Lehmann Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück www.its-lehmann.de ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Register Now & Save for Velocity, the Web Performance & Operations Conference from O'Reilly Media. Velocity features a full day of expert-led, hands-on workshops and two days of sessions from industry leaders in dedicated Performance & Operations tracks. Use code vel09scf and Save an extra 15% before 5/3. http://p.sf.net/sfu/velocityconf _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
