I need to back up a 76TiB dataset to LTO8 tape. This data is primarily large video files that won't change very often. I need two backups, one set of tapes for onsite storage and one set for offsite storage.
My plan has been to back up the server data using two different job definitions, with two different pools, sharing a single file definition. However, the initial backup process takes a long time. This is interfering with our use of the NAS appliance because we need to clear some items from the NAS to free up available space, but if we remove them then the second backup won't back up the removed files a second time. Overall, this "run the backup twice using different tapes" idea isn't great because it could lead to backup synchronization issues where the two backups aren't identical snapshots of a moment in time, and couldn't necessarily be relied upon to have captured the same data. IE, we might not have two backup copies of all data, exactly like in this scenario where we want to delete some data from the NAS for longterm storage on tape. I have read about bacula's copy job process, whereby an existing backup is copied to a new set of media, and the job media won't be restored directly unless the original job media is unavailable. With my current plan, I am confident that it will be easy to tell the difference between the offsite and onsite jobs and their associated media. I mostly distinguish between them by the associated pool. If I run copy jobs against my first backup, will it be similarly easy to tell which media is intended for offsite storage and which is intended for onsite storage? How difficult will it be to run copy jobs with only 1 LTO8 tape drive?I know I'd have to provide suitable spool storage to unspool a given tape. My current spool is 75GiB, so it's woefully undersized for the task. Can copy jobs copy from 1 tape to the other? I've seen references to copy jobs as a primary means to move a copy from a disk volume to a tape volume. I assume this is possible from tape to tape as well, but want to verify. If I rename a bacula job, pool, or fileset in the bacula director config, will it cause any issues with data already backed up to tape when I go to restore? My current backup is named "sharename offsite" and since I can't easily restore from the copy unless the original job is unavailable or I specify the copy job directly by jobid, I wouldn't want to take the original backup offsite and leave the copy onsite. The original full backup took 2 weeks+ to complete and re-running that backup would stink. If I were to do a bscan of those tapes later in some disaster recovery scenario, would I have any issues because the job changed names partway through the full >> incremental lifecycle? Would the copied tapes be interchangable with their original counterpart? I assume not, though it'd be great if so. I imagine a situation where 1 of several tapes are unavailable from the onsite backup set, and we substitute the appropriate tape from the offsite backup set. It does strike me as concerning the possibility that 1 tape is missing from the onsite set and a different tape missing from the offsite set. In that case, even though the tapes are different and the data should be identical, would we be unable to do a full restore of the data from either backup set? background information: I am using bacula to back up a nas appliance holding 196TiB of data, mostly large video files that should not change (though they might be moved to different folders by video editors). I am backing this data up to LTO 8 tape using a Qualstar Q24 tape changer. I have 1 LTO 8 tape drive. Regards, Robert Gerber 402-237-8692 r...@craeon.net
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