On 14 November 2010 01:47, Kleber Leal <
kleber.leal AT gmail DOT com> wrote:
>
>
> 2010/11/12 Dermot Beirne <
dermot.beirne AT dpd DOT ie>
>>
>> Hello,
>> I got no response to my last mail below, so I'll try and summarise my
>> questions a little:
>> (Bacula 3.0.2 on Ubuntu 9.04)
>>
>> 1. If I copy a backup job, is the retention period of the original
>> backup job or the copy backup job used by bacula. I ask because my
>> originals (disk) have a 2 day retention, but their copies (tape) have
>> up to 12 months, but are still not kept in the catalogue and I need to
>> use bscan to restore them. What do I need to check/change?
>
> You can use job and file retention period bigger than volume retention
> period.
> This should keep jobs and files information into catalog and the director
> will search for files to restore in both file and tapes volumes.
>
>>
>> 2. Is there a way Bacula can recycle tape volumes back into Scratch
>> before the pool is empty. Without purging volumes, the Scratch pool
>> runs out.
>>
>> 3. I currently have Daily, Weekly and Monthly disk volumes, which are
>> copied to tape within a few hours of backup, and have a retention of
>> just 2 days to keep space from running out on disk. The Daily disk
>> backup now needs more space, and can't recycle the weekly or monthly
>> disk volumes as they are in different pools in different directories.
>> Hence over 2 TB of disk is inaccessible to the Daily jobs, even though
>> those volumes have expired. Is it possible to have all 3 backup types
>> share and recycle the same disk volumes, in one directory with the
>> same naming scheme, but for the copy job to still know which is a
>> daily, weekly, monthly disk volume so it can apply the required
>> retention to the tape volume? This would allow much better use of
>> disk space.
>
> I think you define a scratch pool you can do this, but I used LVM to group
> all disks into a unique volume and actived automatic creation of volume
> files and limit the number of volumes. I have three 1.5TB disks groups to
> make a volume of 4TB.
>
>>
>> 4. The writing from disk to tape appears very slow. Is there a
>> document/thread somewhere that will help me troubleshoot or benchmark
>> the autoloader throughput (Dell P124T)
>>
>> Thank you for any info.
>> Dermot.
>>
>> On 9 November 2010 10:07, Dermot Beirne <
dermot.beirne AT dpd DOT ie> wrote:
>> > Thanks for replying.
>> >
>> > On my first point below, where you suggest the volume retention is too
>> > low, the volume retention for the monthly tape backups to 12 months,
>> > yet if I attempt to restore a file from a jobid of, say, last March
>> > monthly backup, it is no longer in the catalogue, and I need to bscan
>> > that monthly tape volume to repopulate the catalogue, so I can restore
>> > a file. Is the fact that these are "copy" jobs overriding the
>> > retention on the tape pools with the shorter disk pools retentions, or
>> > can you expand on your suggestion that the retention is the problem.
>> >
>> > On the second point, I understand that purging is the last resort, but
>> > could not find an alternative. We have a tape autoloader with 8
>> > slots. Every day we remove the tapes used that day and replace with
>> > Scratch tapes. The problem is that Bacula never moves tapes back into
>> > Scratch until it has none left. If it is writing the backups to tape,
>> > and uses the last Scratch tape, it will then recycle an old tape
>> > volume (presumably) and ask for manual intervention for someone to
>> > insert this tape, hence the backups stop. Is there a way it can
>> > recycle the volumes back into Scratch before the pool is empty, so the
>> > admin has enough to refill the autoloader each day?
>> >
>> > On the third point, I do use limits on the disk volumes, which is
>> > forcing the recycling as you say, and this works well to stop bacula
>> > causing the backup server to run out of space before it tries to
>> > recycle, however, how do I do this for Tape volumes? If I set such a
>> > limit on the tape pools, its hard to predict which ones it will
>> > recycle, and hence it will stop and wait for manual intervention to
>> > load the tape it has just decided to recycle. I think it needs to do
>> > recycling earlier in the process, so that the Scratch pool is self
>> > replenishing.
>> >
>> > Appreciate your advice.
>> > Dermot.
>> >
>> >
>> > On 6 November 2010 23:30, Dan Langille <
dan AT langille DOT org> wrote:
>> >> On 11/5/2010 12:00 PM, Dermot Beirne wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> Hello,
>> >>> I have been using bacula now for 1 year this month, and it's been a
>> >>> fairly smooth ride, but I have a number of questions that i'd be
>> >>> grateful for some direction on:
>> >>>
>> >>> Bacula version 3.0.2 on Ubuntu 9.04
>> >>>
>> >>> 1. I am concerned about my retention policy. I have 4 disk pools and
>> >>> 4 corresponding tape pools.
>> >>>
>> >>> All the disk pools (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly) have a volume
>> >>> retention of 2 days and Volume Use Duration also 2 days
>> >>>
>> >>> The Tape Pools are as follows:
>> >>> Daily - 12 days
>> >>> Weekly - 32 days
>> >>> Monthly - 12 months
>> >>> Yearly - never recycle
>> >>>
>> >>> I am finding that when needing to restore from an old job, I have to
>> >>> run bscan on the tape as Bacula says it has no records for that job in
>> >>> it's catalog.
>> >>> This is even for monthly backups. Why can this be?
>> >>
>> >> Your Job Retention is too low.
>> >>
>> >>> 2. Use of scratch pools.
>> >>> Every few weeks we have to print a list of the volumes (from the daily
>> >>> and sometimes weekly tape pools), and manually purge (purge jobs
>> >>> volume) anything older than the above retention times in order to
>> >>> force them back into the Scratch pool, as the Scratch pool runs out of
>> >>> volumes because Bacula is not automatically purging once the retention
>> >>> policy expires.
>> >>> Is there a fix for this? Could this be causing/affecting point 1
>> >>> above (i.e. doing manual purges)?
>> >>
>> >> Purging is the last resort. If the scratch pool contains Volumes, they
>> >> will
>> >> be used.
>> >>
>> >>> 3. Disk pool structure.
>> >>> I have 4 directories on my backup server for the Disk pools, Daily,
>> >>> Weekly, Monthly and Yearly. The Daily, Weekly and Monthly directories
>> >>> are all in the region of 1.4Tb in size. The problem is that the
>> >>> server is near it's capacity of disk space, and I can't add any more
>> >>> clients until I address this. I feel the current structure is not
>> >>> making the best use of the space. The retention policy of 2 days on
>> >>> the disk volumes is to allow a tape copy job to run the morning after
>> >>> a nightly backup, and these tapes are then moved to a safe and
>> >>> replaced with Scratch tapes in the autoloader. It also allows us to
>> >>> do a quick restore of a file that may have been deleted the previous
>> >>> day, which is the most common restore request.
>> >>
>> >> It sound like you need to set a limit on the Pool so Bacula starts to
>> >> recycle Volumes. Bacula will not recycle Volumes if it is permitted to
>> >> create new Volumes.
>> >>
>> >>>
>> >>> The space taken up by the weekly and monthly volumes is wasted, as
>> >>> they have expired 2 days after use, but the space is still not
>> >>> available to the Daily volumes. I suspect I'd get a lot more clients
>> >>> covered if I could change this.
>> >>>
>> >>> Is it possible to have a single directory shared by all pools, and all
>> >>> pools share and recycle the same volumes. What are the pros and cons
>> >>> of doing this, or is there a better way.
>> >>>
>> >>> Is there any benefit in upgrading bacula to address any of these
>> >>> items.
>> >>>
>> >>> I'm sorry for the long mail, and appreciate anyone taking the time to
>> >>> read
>> >>> it.
>> >>> Advice welcome on how to proceed with Bacula from here.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Dan Langille -
http://langille.org/
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
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