Hi Timo,
As you said, the Autochangers/Devices definitions on the initial bacula-sd.conf file are suggestions on how to use a virtual disk autochanger with Bacula.
There is a lot of ways to work with disk volumes others that using disk autochangers, yes.
It will mostly depend on your environment, needs, expectations of what you want/need.
Could you please explain us better this "disks will be located in
physically different locations"?
I mean, do you want to have all your backups spreaded in all these disks?
Yes, you can use individual storage devices for individual disk devices defined on your Storage Daemon side.
However, you can take advantage of disk autochangers if you're going to back your 5 servers in one of your disks:
1) have one autochanger with 5 drives (all your 5 drives pointing to the same disk volume directory, for example, /backup/volumes)
2) have each device configured with Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1
3) have your 5 backup jobs running concurrently, each one will use one of the 5 drives
4) you can have one pool for each server, so you would have all your backups from one specific server in one specific pool (this could help you with management)
5) but you can also have all your servers backups running concurrently into one specific device/volume. In both cases (one drive/volume per job or your 5 jobs using one device/volume) will increase your backup speed.
If your idea is to spread all your backups into all your disks in different locations (of course if you have enough space for that), you can use copy/Virtual Full jobs to accomplish that.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
Ana
