> > I want to setup "Synthetic" backups and write them to tape. I suspect that I > can use the "Next Pool" directive to point to a pool containing tape volumes. > My intention is that I will be taking the last Full and subsequent > Incrementals from the Disk-To-Disk backup jobs and writing them to tape as a > Synthetic backup. > > I was wondering if I will be able to restore from the synthetic job, or > exactly how a restore from this backup would work. >
I do exactly this. My Disk backups are for day to day recovery purposes (although seldom needed under Windows with all the VSS retention stuff these days) and the tapes are taken off site for in the event of a total server room loss recovery situation. One thing you'll find is that your first VirtualFull backup will be fine, but the second one will want to use the previous VirtualFull backup as its starting point (bacula just finds the most recent Full which includes VirtualFull), which won't work as you can't have two tapes in the drive at once, even if you wanted to do it that way. What I do is: . Full backup of all servers on Saturday night . Incremental backup of all servers 3 times a day . VirtualFull (synthetic) backup every weeknight (eg when someone is on site to change tapes) . Back up the Catalog to tape every weeknight . Purge the tape volume from Bacula after Catalog backup Because I only need the tape in the event of a total server room loss, purging the volume doesn't present any problems, and in the event of a disaster I have a copy of the catalog on tape which has all the data I need. My "Run After" script for my catalog backup does the purging. It looks like this: " #!/bin/sh /etc/bacula/scripts/delete_catalog_backup /usr/bin/mysql --skip-column-names bacula -ubacula -p<password redacted> <<EOF | SELECT DISTINCT VolumeName FROM Job JOIN Pool ON Job.PoolId = Pool.PoolId JOIN JobMedia ON Job.JobId = JobMedia.JobId JOIN Media ON JobMedia.MediaId = Media.MediaId WHERE Pool.Name = 'Tape'; EOF while read media do echo Purging $media echo "purge volume=$media" | /usr/bin/bconsole >/dev/null 2>/dev/null done " The Pool where my tapes are called is called 'Tape'. James ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Achieve Improved Network Security with IP and DNS Reputation. Defend against bad network traffic, including botnets, malware, phishing sites, and compromised hosts - saving your company time, money, and embarrassment. Learn More! http://p.sf.net/sfu/hpdev2dev-nov _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
