There is some stuff I still don't understand here, and I'd like to avoid
learning the hard way. For instance, I never realized that "File
Retention" referred to the individual file records in the database, not
to the actual files on backup. So I ended up losing many of my File
records (learning the hard way), when what I really wanted was for the
volumes containing those files to be made available for re-use when
necessary. So now I *think* I have accomplished this by setting Job
Retention and File Retention to 365 days, and Volume Retention to 30
days. I would assume that, after 30 days since the last time a Volume
was written, it will be available for recycling, but I won't lose the
database records when that happens. In my case, I'm only using Bacula
for a dozen or so systems and VMs at home as clients, so I'm not overly
concerned with the size of the database.
What good does it do to have database records for files that are no
longer available, you may well ask? I use Copy jobs to copy my online
backup media to my archive backup media. The former is just one big
disk, the latter is a series of disks inserted in an external USB caddy,
implemented with vchanger. I periodically run Copy jobs to copy backups
from the main disk to the vchanger, so that if the main disk volume gets
recycled, the files still exist on the vchanger. Since these are
separate Pools, I can and do set the Volume Retention differently for
each. But my impression is that the Copy jobs don't really create
separate File records. File Retention seems to be set only on a per
client basis, so if I want to be able to do full-feature restores from
the vchanger, I need to keep the File records around even if the volume
in the main backup Pool has been recycled.
Am I understanding how this works correctly?
Next question is about volume purging. How does Bacula determine when it
is time to recycle a volume? Will it do this automatically after the
Volume Retention period has expired? How exactly is the Volume Retention
period measured? (Meaning, if I set it to 30 days, it's 30 days from
when?) When a volume expires, does it immediately become unusable, or
only when space is needed? When space is needed, will Bacula
automatically use a volume that is past its retention period, or do I
have to do something manually to make the expired volumes available?
Sorry to be so dense here. I have spent a lot of time reading the online
docs, and I've been using Bacula since August, but some of this is still
not clear to me.
Thanks,
--Greg
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