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In Samba's case, you certainly do continue to have the option of editing
it manually, BTW. I don't use SWAT much, but I did switch between
editing the file and using SWAT on it when I was first starting out.
Seemed to work fine.
---- _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _
|Y#| | | |\/| | \ |\ | | |Ryan Novosielski - User Support Spec. III
|$&| |__| | | |__/ | \| _| |[EMAIL PROTECTED] - 973/972.0922 (2-0922)
\__/ Univ. of Med. and Dent.|IST/AST - NJMS Medical Science Bldg - C630
Bill Moran wrote:
> 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
>
>
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