[Bacula-users] How to handle long, time consuming backups

Hello list,

I have used Bacula for while now for backing up several computers in our network and it works very well.
I back up serveral linux servers and a few clients to a harddisk. These are all either on the local network (relative to the director and storage) or connected through high speed internet connections.
I use priorities to first back up the servers, then the clients, then back up the catalog and finaly I run a Admin Job (Type = Admin in Job resource) which starts a shell script that syncs the harddisk containing all the volumes to an other harddisk. This last step of course is to prevent data loss in case of a harddisk crash. Al the jobs take up 2 hours max to complete.

Now the problem.
I would like to back up a windows client which has 20 Gb of mostly static data over a slow (internet) connection. Incremental backups are very quick because of the fairly static nature of the data, but doing a full backup would take a little more than 4 days. In itsself, this is not a problem. I can do a full backup once a month and do incrementals each day for instance. The problem is that during these 4 days when the full backup runs, no other job can run. It blocks all other jobs.
There is an option to run concurrent jobs which would solve the problem, but this also works for jobs with the same priority. Now I need these priorities to make sure the copy/sync of the complete storage from hdd 1 to hdd 2 runs as the last job. Also the backup of the catalog would need to run after all other backup jobs I presume.

The best solution for me would make it possible to leave the server and storage on my local network, and the file daemon on the remote network.
I have come up with some solutions but I am wondering if there's a better way. Being able to run concurrent jobs with different priorities whould be a nice one :)
Possible solutions.
- Increase the bandwith. This is an option. The backup would then be the only process needing this resource. The obvious downside would be the increase of the price for backups. Currently they run on a simple consumer ADSL line. High upload bandwith would really increase the monthly bill.
- Local backup solution. The downside to this is decentralisation of administration and the loss of off-site backup advantage for this location.
- Decrease the backup size. Not really easy. The data to be backed up is somewhat of an unstructured mess and I would rather not touch it if not nessecairy.
- Maybe there's a solution in the concurrent jobs region but I haven't found it yet.

Does anyone have an idea how to solve this efficiently or have any experience with this type of problem?

Thanks for any response!

Maarten Hoogveld

Elevate BV
Diopter 80
1025 MS Amsterdam
The Netherlands

Tel: +31 (0)20 636 96 33
Mob: +31 (0)6 4349 8382

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