On Tuesday 23 August 2005 21:21, Ron Wheeler wrote: > Bacula requires an operator as opposed to a more simple system like > Lone-tar where you just have a secretary stick in the next tape and the > backup runs.
Yes this is true if all you have is one system or a few systems where all the data fits on a single tape. In that case, as the manual says, you are wasting your time with Bacula. > > The handling and labeling of tapes is critical with bacula since backups > can be spread all over the place and bacula wants to manage the tape pool > so the operator has to pay attention to bacula's instructions. This is Bacula's "natural" behavior, which is suitable for larger operations. Its "natural" behavior can be modified to pretty much mimic what you want, but it is really sub-optimal except for the case of having an intelligent secretary that doesn't shuffle tapes. I had a very intelligent secretary but she occasionally shuffled tapes (I probably would have too were I doing her work). > > On the other hand, it does a nicer job of backing up machines over the > network and controlling remote backups. Recovery of the system holding the > bacula catalog is a bit of an issue and if you do not have a good manual > control of your tapes, you will spend a long time getting your system back > up. Something like Lone-tar just has you stick a recovery CD in the drive, > your latest full backup in the tape drive and boot. Then you apply your > incrementals and you are back up. Nice if you only have one machine and you know where the last full backup is. Won't work with larger sites (even with my tiny operation). > > Disks are very convenient but a bit expensive for archival storage. A 72 GB > DAT tape is about $20. A hard drive is a bit more. > > You have to think about the the threats that you are protecting against. > > 1) Theft of the servers - If they steal your backup disk with this, then > what? > > 2) Destruction of the building - fire, etc. If you lose the entire data > center, it would be nice to have some off-site media. > > 3) Loss of a drive. Drives are one day closer of failing every day. What if > it is your catalog database? > > 4) Loss of a user file. All strategies work pretty well. Good points. > > There are lots of other situations but these are the biggies. If you have > figured out how to get by 1, 2 and 3 probably any other circumstance will > be a piece of cake. > > Watch out for database backups since they do not like the fact that you > started backing up the database at one time and then later came for the > log. It may not be very happy when it is restored like that since the log > and the data are not in sync. Bacula stores its catalog in your MySQL > database so it is active while the backup is running. Well, if you use the default database backup, there is no such thing as the log, only the database -- this is the case for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite, and there is no problem of Bacula writing to the database during the backup. The database code worries about that as all good databases do when you ask them to dump the data. > > > Experience is a great but expensive teacher. One of my clients was robbed > and lost the server with the last backup tape in the tape drive. It took 2 > days to replace the hardware and get everything back up but it is a lesson > that you do not forget. I had a good backup system and off-site media from > the preceeding day (always take the latest backup off-site as soon as it is > done.) > > I recently lost the drive on the servers and it took way too long to get > back up and running with bacula. Just reconstructing the catalog took > several days. It takes about 3 hours to scan a backup tape to rebuild the > catalog. If you do not have a manual system to control your tapes, you can > spend a long time just getting the catalog rebuilt to a point of usability. Didn't you have a bootstrap of the backup of the catalog? That would have got the catalog back in minutes, with absolutely no problems. Creation of a bootstrap for the catalog backup has been in the default bacula-dir.conf for some time now (at least since 1.36.3). In your example, it could be printed every night and taken offsite with the tape. One should create a bootstrap for each client. That way, you don't even need to restore the catalog in the case of a total failure -- you just restore everything using the bootstrap file. Once the system is back up, you will probably want to then restore the catalog using its bootstrap file. > > I hope that these ideas help. Your backup system consists of both automated > and manual procedures and you have to implement both of them to have an > adequate response to a disaster. It is always good to hear from someone who has been burned. It helps wake people up to the fact of simply having the data on tape is not always enough. You must be able to get it off, and if you have multiple clients on the same tape, it is not a simple operation. I suspect that you fell into some of the traps that are common for a complicated system such as Bacula -- I do try to warn you about *all* of them at the very beginning of the manual in the section that tells you what you absolutely must do before putting the system in production mode. I will be the first to admit that without a bit of work (adapting), Bacula is very inconvenient out of the box for a setup where you want to do full backups every night or quite often and take the full backup tape off-site. I try indicate that at the very beginning of the manual. If you find that you need a manual system with Bacula, then something is wrong, and I would suspect that you are not using it in a "correct" manner. PS: when I refer to the manual, I mean the development manual -- though all the items I reference have been there a long time, and are hopefully in the old 1.36.3 manual as well. > > Ron > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Alex Polvi > Sent: August 22, 2005 7:18 PM > To: bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net > Subject: [Bacula-users] Other testimonials? > > > Greetings, > > We are looking at moving our backups over to bacula. I checked out the > testimonials on the main website, but those did not seem comparable to > our environment. Does anyone have experience using bacula with 100+ > clients (mainly Linux, but also a sprinkle of Mac OSX and Windows Server)? > Has it been proven to be able to complete daily backups with that many > hosts using disk or tapes? > > Also, we are leaning toward using spinning disks instead of tapes. We > have systems at a few different co-locations and do not have the man > power to administer tape-driven backups across our entire infrastructure. > Are there any advantages of bacula and tapes that might make us reconsider? > > Thanks for your insight. > > Regards, > > -Alex -- Best regards, Kern ("> /\ V_V ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
