Re: [Bacula-users] Best backup strategy to use the minimum size

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 8:05 PM, Jose Perez <jvoorhees1 AT gmail DOT com> wrote:

Hi people:

I'm trying to find the best combination of Full, Differential and
Incremental backups to save disk space, I'd like someone can help me
with some ideas:

Our policy says that we must keep user data of last 3 months, so
according to that I planned to do something like this:

Client {
...
...
File Retention = 90 days
Job Retention = 90 days
}
Pool {
Name = Default
Type = Backup
Recycle = yes
Autoprune = yes
Label Format = Vol-
Volume Use Duration = 10 days
Volume Retention = 90 days
}
Schedule {
Name = Daily
Run Level=Incremental Pool=Default
}

As you see I only run Incremental backups letting Bacula autodetect
the first as a Full Backup. So after 90 days I would have a Full
Backup and 89 Incremental Backups (or so), but past ten days my first
Volume (the one that includes my first and unique Full Backup) would
be marked as Purged and consequently Recycled. So I would lose the
posibility to restore my hole data within those 90 days because with
many incremental but no full backup I can't do anything, right?

If I pretend not to lose my Full Backups every time a Volume gets
recycled I think should be necessary to run a Full Backup every ten
days, right? But I think that doing so would consume too much disk
space, or not?

- Is this the best way (space economically) to keep 90 days of recoverable data?
- Do I need to use different Pools for Incremental and Full Backups?
- What are your best backup strategies to keep data available to be restored?

Please consider that I'm using File disk Backups. I hope someone can
point me to better ideas than mine

Here's one possibility:

Pool {
Name = Full
...
Volume Use Duration = 23 hours
Volume Retention = 89 days
}

Pool {
Name = Differential
...
Volume Use Duration = 23 hours
Volume Retention = 89 days
}

Pool {
Name = Incremental
...
Volume Use Duration = 23 hours
Volume Retention = 90 days
}

Do a Differential once every 90 days and Incrementals the rest of the time. In theory, you only need to run one Full backup. Ever. In practice, you'll probably want to create a new Full backup every year or so to clear out the obsolete data and make your differentials smaller (and faster).

Another way to do it that uses even less disk space would be to eliminate the differentials completely and just create a new Full backup every 90 days.

- Cedric

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