Re: [Bacula-users] Supporting Operating Systems & DB Applications

On Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:00:32 +0530
Manu S <manupkd87 AT gmail DOT com> wrote:

> Bacula client support *Windows 2003 server enterprise* and *Windows
> 2008 server 64 bit enterprise*? Bacula server will install on Linux
> but needs to take backup from different database application backup
> from different OS. Is bacula supports to take backup and restore of
> the below mentioned DB applications:?
> 
> SQL server 2008?
> SQL server 2010?
> DB6?
> Mysql?
To my knowledge, Bacula itself (at least its "community" F/OSS version)
does not directly support backing up databases.  This is logical,
because to back up a database to a file (or data stream) is a task for
the particular database software; general-purpose backup tools like
Bacula are only able to back up files.

Hence, backing up a database with Bacula is a two-step process:
1) A snapshot of the relevant database is made using tools provided
   by the DBMS hosting that database.
2) Bacula copies the resulting snapshot file to its archive media.

How the first step is carried out, highly depends on the database engine
and its tools.  I'm aware of the two approaches to this.
1) Dumping: the database is just dumped to a file of a special format
   which can be read by a symmetrical "undumping" utility.
   A typical example is backing up MySQL databases by using its
   `mysqldump` tool which generates a text file with a series of SQL
   statements.
2) Hot-copying: the database engine is told to flush any pending changes
   to the underlying database file(s) and then "freeze" any I/O
   on them.  After this, the file(s) can be safely copied and then
   the database engine is told to resume its I/O on those files.
   A typical example is the `mysqlhotcopy` tool which can be used
   to back up database files managed by the MyISAM engine.
   Another example of hot-copying is provided by Microsoft SQL Server:
   it registers itself as a client for the VSS Windows service,
   and when VSS enters active mode, MSSQL flushes any pending changes
   to its database files, checkpoints transaction logs and freezes
   I/O on the database files.

Since Bacula File Daemon for Winows supports VSS (since Windows 2003 at
least), Microsoft SQL Server can be backed this way: you just ensure
VSS is activated during the backup session and simple tell Bacula where
the relevant database files are located--when Bacula copies these files,
they're guaranteed to be in a consistent state and not change during
copying.
If you don't want to use VSS with MSSQL, you can script a "before job"
task which would call any of the command-line tools provided by MSSQL
(sqlcmd or isql) and pass it appropriately constructed SQL statements.

Personally, I'm backing up Microsoft SQL Server 2005 running on Windows
2003 R2 machine using VSS snapshotting and a number of MySQL databases
using `mysqldump` calls in "before job" scripts.

As you can see, your question has little sense per se, but I hope I was
able to provide a solid background for you.

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