Christophe,
I will try to help. See replies below.
On Wed, Jan 8, 2025 at 9:48 AM Christophe PEREZ via Bacula-users <
bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> I would like to apply some job/file retention strategy but I don't know
> how.
> Here is what I would like:
>
I know you said you have no problems with the schedule, but maybe it would
help to save space if you only did a diff on the 3rd sunday. The 5th
sunday does not happen very often, and it is very close to the 1st sunday.
I saw your correction email saying you actually do the diff on 2nd and 5th
sunday. I think that a single diff on the 3rd Sunday is a better idea if
you want to save space.
- Full backup on the first Sunday of the month, kept in a single copy
> - Diff backup on the 3rd and 5th Sundays of the month, kept in a single
> copy
> - Inc backup every other day, kept just the time needed compared to
> Full and Diff.
> (I have no problem with the schedule. It already works like that. No
> need to spend time on it.)
>
>
I do not think you will lose files with this first idea. Maybe you could
have problems if you have two full backups run in a single month, but this
would require a schedule error to occur, I think. I assume you have only 1
FD. MaximumVolumes="2" can only work if you have only 1 FD. Really, for
this to work the right way you must have MaximumVolumes=X where X = (total
FD x 2).
> Here is what I had so far, which works for volume renewal, but I am not
> sure that I will not lose files along the way:
>
Pool {
> Name = Full-Medion
> Label Format = medion-full-
> Pool Type = Backup
> Recycle = yes
> AutoPrune = yes
> Volume Retention = 40 days
> Maximum Volume Jobs = 1
> Maximum Volumes = 2
> }
> Pool {
> Name = Diff-Medion
> Label Format = medion-diff-
> Pool Type = Backup
> Recycle = yes
> AutoPrune = yes
> Volume Retention = 13 days
> Maximum Volume Jobs = 1
> Maximum Volumes = 2
> }
> Pool {
> Name = Inc-Medion
> Label Format = medion-inc-
> Pool Type = Backup
> Recycle = yes
> AutoPrune = yes
> Volume Retention = 5 days
> Maximum Volume Jobs = 6
> Maximum Volumes = 2
> }
>
> But now, due to lack of space, I would like to reduce the retention to
> the bare minimum as I explained above.
>
>
This idea below cannot work, and is dangerous. Think about it - if you can
only have 1 full volume, you must delete your old full before you can make
a new full. This is dangerous because you would have to delete your backup
before you can make a new backup.
> I thought about doing:
> Pool {
> Name = Full-Medion
> Label Format = medion-full-
> Pool Type = Backup
> Recycle = yes
> AutoPrune = yes
> Volume Retention = 1 month
> Maximum Volume Jobs = 1
> Maximum Volumes = 1
> }
> Pool {
> Name = Diff-Medion
> Label Format = medion-diff-
> Pool Type = Backup
> Recycle = yes
> AutoPrune = yes
> Volume Retention = 15 days
> Maximum Volume Jobs = 1
> Maximum Volumes = 1
> }
> Pool {
> Name = Inc-Medion
> Label Format = medion-inc-
> Pool Type = Backup
> Recycle = yes
> AutoPrune = yes
> Volume Retention = 14 days
> Maximum Volume Jobs = 6
> Maximum Volumes = 2
> }
> but I feel like it can't work on single volumes. Until now, I wanted a
> single volume for each Full and Diff, and a volume per week for the
> Inc. But this notion of volume seems ultimately blocking to me.
>
Think of bacula volumes as tapes. Bacula started as a tape backup program.
Bacula *is* able to add data to volumes, as I am sure you know.
Bacula cannot remove or edit data on a volume. The only way to remove data
is to remove the volume.
I think this is because of the way tapes worked.
Because you want to save hard drive space, it is good to keep only a
certain number of jobs on each volume. This means you can recycle volumes
sooner.
> Shouldn't I put everything in a single volume to achieve what I want?
> Should I make a single pull, without limiting the number of jobs, with:
> Volume Retention = 1 month
> Maximum Volumes = 1
> ?
>
>
Have you considered compression to help use less space? You specify
compression in the fileset, in options. Compression tasks are done on the
FD. Bacula supports GZIP, LZO, and ZSTD (ZSTD might be only available in
newer bacula versions like 15.0.2). For my case I found that ZSTD gave the
best mix of speed and compression. It was as fast as LZO, and compressed as
much as GZIP. Otherwise, if ZSTD is not available for you, GZIP will
probably save the most space, and LZO will probably be fastest.
Example fileset from one of my systems:
FileSet {
Name = "Synology-shares-fs"
Include {
Options {
#compression=GZIP
#compression=LZO
compression=ZSTD
Signature = "SHA512"
OneFS = "no"
verify = pins3
}
File = /mnt/synology/
}
}
I hope this helps. Please tell me if you could not understand something.
> NB: keep it simple please, because I don't master the language or
> bacula...
> --
> Christophe PEREZ
>
>
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>
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