[Bacula-users] Can we run multiple sd's with one dir?

I have over 200 users with about 20 TB's of data that we backup. And I have a problem...

THE PROBLEM
The concept of backup is starting to lose it's meaning with desktops sporting 1.5 TB drives. How can we stay abreast (sp?) of backing up ever increasing drive sizes in workstations?

CENTRALIZED BACKUPS
a. Let's say six months from now, 50 workstations will have a 1 TB drive each
b. and another 50 workstations with 500 GB drives,
c. and 50 with 250 GBs,
d. and the rest with 100 GB drives

Quick math shows we need to backup 75%*(50 TB + 25 TB + 12.5 TB + 5TB) = 70 TB. I can buy one 32 TB's RAID 5 array for about $12.7K not including any head ends. So, let's say I get by with 2 arrays - that's about $400/TB.

COMPARE WITH DISTRIBUTED BACKUPS
That means we put the backup drive in each workstation and run a fd and sd on the same machine:
a. For each of the 200 workstations, we use 1 TB backup drives - that's about $110/TB.

I lose RAID 5 protection and gain in at-least 4 areas - at a quarter of the cost:
a. Avoid high-capacity RADI 5 drive corruption
b. All eggs are not in one array, disasters damage is isolated
c. the need for an off-site disaster recovery backup is reduced. Not eliminated, but the risk is spread out over 200 sites.
d. I also gain in backup storage capacity.

THE QUESTION
To implement local backups, can I have 1 dir controlling 200 sd's? - one for each workstation as follows:

[bacula-dir server] ------------ [sd and fd on workstation1 with 2 drives of same capacity. The second drive is the backup drive]
                          ------------ [sd and fd on a workstation2 with 2 drives of same capacity. The second drive is the backup drive]
                          ------------ and so on...
                          ---

Yudhvir

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