Hi,
and welcome here! I hope we can give you all the information you need
- and rely on you to support others, later!
30.10.2009 07:24, Leslie Rhorer wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I am looking for a backup solution which has the following features:
>
> 1. Back up to removable hard drives
Bacula can do that.
> 2. Span multiple target drives
Sure.
> 3. Maintain a virtual fileysystem so all snapshots look like a single
> backup volume to the user.
Well - here it would probably help if you knew more about Bacula
already :-)
When doing a restore Bacula can present you with an overview of all
the files backed up from a certain machine, so this is kind of like a
virtual file system. This is presented to the user in the Bacula
console program or the BAT gui. At the selecting stage of a restore,
you don't have to know anything about volumes and what is stored
where, so I guess your requirement is covered.
> 4. Maintain an easily monitored index so the user can see which drive
> will be needed for a particular backup or restore operation.
For restores, you get a list of needed volumes, and Bacula asks for a
volume change or load if it's required.
For backup jobs, Bacula handles that automatically - only if no usable
volume is available, the operator gets a message asking for a usable
volume. There's no 100% reliable way of knowing which volumes will be
needed before a job is run, though, as other jobs can have an effect
on volume availability. In general, I'd say that Bacula does the right
thing - if a usable volume is available, it uses it, if it isn't, it asks.
As you can do rather complex things with pools and volumes, you can
set up Bacula in ways that require lots of manual intervention -
avoiding that sometimes needs good planning.
> 5. Be able to easily rebuild the index and virtual file system from the
> target drives (preferably just one drive - probably the last one) if the
> database is lost on the source system.
You can rebuild the catalog from the existing volumes, but usually you
only do that in a real desaster situation.
What you can and should do is backing up the catalog itself after each
backup cycle usually daily after all jobs are run). Restoring the
catalog, if you lost your database, is rather simple provided you
follow the documented procedures.
> Features #1 and #2 are especially important. Many pieces of backup
> software talk about being able to back up to tape, CD/DVD-R, or even floppy
> disks. Backing up to a group of removable hard drives is a little different
> kettle of fish, though, because hard drives are not really expected to be
> used in this fashion. Teh application has to be able to understand that
> even though it is a hard drive, it can be removed and will prompt theuser to
> do so.
Bacula can do that - essentially, it doesn't care if a volume is a
tape or a disk file, and you can set up Bacula to know that diesk
files are removable media.
> It also must be able to either write to the raw drive target, or
> else umount the drive and mount the new drive when it is inserted into the
> drive enclosure.
There are several tools and procedures to achieve that. Note that
Bacula does not write to raw disks, but creates regular files as
volumes it uses, so you can use the OS tools like udev or automounter
to get disks mounted when attached, which is what the above mentioned
tools rely on.
> I cannot afford a large tape drive, and I do have a backup
> server with an array slightly larger than the main array, but there are a
> number of hazards that this strategy does not cover. Doing incremental
> backups to a series of 2TB (3TB when they come out) hard drives is a perfect
> alternative - if I can find the software to handle it. Is Bacula that
> software?
I guess it can be with a bit of planning... with the vchanger add-on
it should do what you need quite neatly (but be aware that I never
used vchanger...)
Cheers,
Arno
>
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--
Arno Lehmann
IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück
www.its-lehmann.de
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Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA
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ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference
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