On 12/5/2011 1:48 PM, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> On 12/05/11 10:58, Pablo Marques wrote:
>> Thanks you Jesse for the feedback.
>>
>> Regarding the disaster recovery, I have a suggestion for the bacula
>> team:
>>
>> Why not make the director write the bacula config files and any
>> relevant bsr files at the beginning of each tape? The space wasted on
>> the tape to save these file would be very small.
> Well, the first problem here is that the Director would have to know how
> much space it was going to need for BSR files. Of course, it could
> pre-allocate a fixed-size block of, say, 1MB for BSR files.
>
> The second problem, it seems to me, is that this would break
> compatibility with all older Bacula volumes and installations.
Rather than change the formatting of a volume, why not use a dedicated
volume? The first problem to overcome in a true disaster recovery
situation, ie. a total loss of all hardware, is to get a Dir and SD up
and running. Clients can then be restored with a much simpler, generic
USB boot device. Booting the new Director from a disaster recovery USB
stick is much more complicated, since we must somehow get the database
and config files restored. If there was a reserved volume label
dedicated to having the most current config files and catalog, then a
disaster recovery boot device for the Dir should not be necessary. All
that would be needed is a minimal OS and fresh install of Bacula.
There would be two special jobs. One would backup config files and
catalog SQL file into a new volume. The data could be written to any
new/empty volume in the normal way, but at completion, the special job
would relabel the volume to have the reserved volume label. The second
special job would be to restore config and catalog from the reserved
volume. The first special job would be run daily, or at whatever
frequency the catalog needs to be backed up. The second special job
would be run only should the machine running Dir need to be restored.
The only thing special about these special jobs is that they always
select a hardwired reserved volume.
I am not a fan of relying on the availability of identical replacement
hardware. In a disaster recovery, it is not unlikely that one would be
forced to utilize whatever hardware is immediately available. Since this
can affect number of disks, partitioning, etc., I prefer to install a
minimal OS, along with Bacula and a SQL database server, and then
restore the Dir. The install of Bacula creates an empty catalog
database, or at least installs a script for creating one. The only thing
that needs to be configured manually, then, is the initial SD config,
which must have a Device for the archive device needed to mount the
reserved volume. Then starting Dir and SD and running the special
restore job restores the real config files and the catalog. The restored
SD config will have to be manually edited to use the device nodes
correct for the replacement machine. After restarting Dir and SD, the
machine itself can then be restored in the usual way.
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