On Fri, 5 May 2006 14:47:12 +0200
Kern Sibbald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Thanks for your thoughts.
>
> When I was first researching the kind of basic organization I wanted for
> Bacula, I took a look at Amanda, read a bit on their email list, and talked
> to a user who had used Amanda, which basically from what I understand works
> much like that. That is Amanda figures out what has to be done then does it.
>
> Well, the person I talked to about Amanda and a number of other users
> complained the most about precisely that feature. Now, it doesn't mean that
> it is a bad feature, but it means that the issue is rather complicated to
> implement in a way that will please everyone (I certainly didn't know how to
> do it). As a result, I decided to do it the "traditional way".
That's interesting to know. It pretty much validates my concerns, I
suppose.
> That said, I have often thought of adding directives to guarantee that
> certain
> levels are performed at specified intervals (i.e. Differental at least once a
> week, ...). In the future, I could see adding some additional resources such
> as your Policy idea (cool) that along with some basic scheduling information,
> might decide more appropriately or rather dynamically what level to run when.
>
> Most adminstrators will still want considerable control over exactly when
> certain backups run to avoid interferring with users or to reduce network
> congestion ...
Theoretically, there could be additional configuration to moderate
usage. Such as directives to limit bandwidth usage to different amounts
at different times of day. Or a directive to indicate that a specific
system is only available for backup at certain periods. To really do
it correctly would probably be _very_ complex.
I was thinking that an interesting interim step might be a front-end
program that allows you to enter the business logic (servers, data
importance, etc) and then generates a configuration from that input
that would work with the current Bacula. I'm frightened of the SWAT
problem (i.e. the SWAT config tool for Samba is really nice, but
once you've used it you can never manually edit the smb.conf file
again!) So the tool would have to store extra config data in "magic"
comments (or something) so the admin would still have the ability
to manually adjust the config. I only wish I had time to work on
this.
> On Friday 05 May 2006 14:32, Bill Moran wrote:
> > My reason for writing this is to share my thoughts with the Bacula
> > community before I move on to another project and forget all this.
> >
> > The other day, I was documenting the backup procedure here, and how
> > it fit in with our DRP and business policy. As I was trying to
> > document our Bacula config and explain how it reflected our business
> > policy, I got to wondering, "Why do all backup softwares work this
> > way? Isn't the job of sofware to translate human stuff into computer
> > stuff for us?"
> >
> > For example, imagine the following fictional software config for a
> > (yet non-existent) backup software:
> >
> > Policy {
> > Name = "CriticalData"
> > Acceptable Loss = 4 hours
> > Archive = 6 months
> > }
> >
> > Policy {
> > Name = "ConfigData"
> > Acceptable Loss = 1 day
> > Archive = 3 months
> > }
> >
> > Client {
> > Name = FileServer
> > Default Policy = None
> > Policy {
> > Name = "CriticalData"
> > Dir = /home
> > }
> > Policy {
> > Name = "ConfigData"
> > Dir = /etc
> > }
> > }
> >
> > Now, the backup software would automagically generate a schedule that
> > ensured that data on /home was backed up at least every 4 hours, and
> > that it was retained for at least 6 months, while ensuring that data
> > in /etc was backed up daily, and retained for three months. The rest
> > of the data on the server is not backed up (in this example).
> >
> > Granted, there's a lot of detail missing from the example config.
> > The system would need to be told what its options were as far as
> > media and pools and the like, but I think it describes what I've been
> > thinking for the last few days: that the config _could_ be closer to
> > the business logic in structure than the application logic.
> >
> > On the flip side, there are disadvantages. This kind of config might
> > abstract the process too much, and take too much control away from the
> > administrator. I've always been a big fan of software that is easy to
> > use, but has an "advanced" option that allows you to control the nitty
> > gritty details, should you want to. It's possible that creating such
> > a high level of abstraction as I'm describing would make advanced
> > control too difficult, or impossible.
> >
> > Anyway, those are my thoughts. Hopefully I've described it in a way
> > that others can understand. Hopefully its useful information that
> > someone will find inspiring or something.
> >
> > And Bacula kicks ass, just in case anyone was wondering :) This is
> > not intended to be a complaint about Bacula's config or anything, I'm
> > very happy with Bacula and how it works. I just thought I'd share my
> > thoughts.
>
> --
> Best regards,
>
> Kern
>
> (">
> /\
> V_V
--
Bill Moran
Collaborative Fusion Inc.
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