Hello
and welcome here!
I hope that, together with our community, you get your questions
answered to your full satisfaction. I'll try to give you some hints...
27.04.2009 17:49, Steven Palm wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I'm new here, so be gentle. :) I work for a non-profit with a mix of
> Windows, Mac OS X and Linux servers/desktops/laptops. As our needs and
> equipment base has grown, backups have always been somewhat
> problematic once we got past a few central file repositories.
>
> We had purchased a bruApp system quite some time ago, and quite
> honestly, it has been a thorn in our side and has failed to live up to
> the promises made when we purchased it. I won't go into all the gory
> details here,
Actually, I'd like to know more about these details - and wht you
liked, too.
> but it became clear that we needed something else as I
> am tired of dealing with it and the false hopes and promises made by
> Tolis Group.
>
> I am re-using that 1U server and the Exabyte Magnum 1x7 loader, and
> looking for a new software backend to drive it. I had looked at
> Amanda, and just recently came across Bacula. After much reading, I
> think this surely CAN do everything we need, the question is HOW. :)
I'm pretty sure we'll get you there :-)
> Two main questions right now:
>
> * I am also looking at BackupPC for our roving laptops, and to give
> them a nice interface to retrieve files. However, is there anywhere
> documentation on how to effectively backup this "pool" via Bacula?
I'd suggest to just back up that pool with a very plain setup.
Accurate backups will be good, probably.
> I've seen lots of references, but so far have found no examples. As
> attractive as this is, if it turns out better to use Bacula all
> around, I'm open to that as well.
Myself, I would use Bacula only, but that also depends on the
available bandwidth and backup windows. Especially for roaming
laptops, the deduping build into rsync is a really valuable feature.
> * I liked the basic BRU concept of backup to a stage disk and dump
> to tape. After reading about VBackup and Migration/Copy stuff, I
> think that we could do a full backup and then incrementals (or
> differentials? Not sure here) with occasional refreshes of the Full
> backup.
Should work, though I haven't used virtual fulls yet. Especially
regarding pool and volume management, virtual fulls can be a bit of a
challenge - for simplicity, I'd suggest to use a more straightforward
setup at least to get started with Bacula. You can refine your
procedures later on anyway.
> The notes on page 10 of the Concepts document talk about the Copy
> job, and give a sample config, but I think part of it is missing...
> It mentions a "Storage = vtl" without any storage definition. I
> suppose if I were familiar with bacula, I'd know what to put here, but
> I do not.
Ignore it for now, it will become clear once you've got a real Bacula
setup.
> So, is there anyone who has this working who would care to share a
> set of configs? Backup via a Full backup every so often, doing
> incrementals/differentials in between, and using VBackup/Migrare/Copy
> to consolidate and keep a current "Full" backup that can be dumped to
> tape?
Start with a plain setup of the needed jobs, and - what I usually
recommend - three pools. One for Full backups, one for Differentials,
one for Incrementals. Create a disk based storage device for those
pools, and reference it in the pool definition.
Create the file sets you need, and the client definitions.
Then, set up a schedule to, for example, do a ful backup once a month,
differentials in the weeks without the full backup, and incrementals
all the other days.
After that run for a while, you define a copy job to copy the latest
full backup to tape.
> We also used to dump a nightly complete set to tape M-Th, and a
> Weekly1-5 Friday tape, and then kept a Monthly tape for each month. I
> am looking at Pool definitions to accommodate that, but also am not
> sure how that all fits with the above...
With a pool per backup level, that's quite simple - you just set the
volume retention time for the pools accordingly. Keep full backups for
three months, differentials for six weeks, and incrementals for 16
days, for example.
Then, the target pool for the copied full backups could have a longer
retention time - you could even use different pools, and move selected
jobs to a pool with a longer retention time.
The key thing to remember is, in my opinion, that the time you keep
your data can be controlled most easily by setting the pools retention
time accordingly. The client and job based retention times can be
longer - once a volume is pruned, the related jobs are also pruned.
> The immense documentation of this project is a blessing, especially
> in the open source world,
I absolutely agree. The most important thing is not be let yourself be
overwhelmed by it - start simple, and you'll easily understand those
simple concepts. You can add complexity later, if you understand the
basics better.
Hope this gets you started,
Arno
> but at the same time it makes the initial
> learning curve quite high. So I thank you for your consideration and
> help.
>
> Steve
>
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--
Arno Lehmann
IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück
www.its-lehmann.de
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