I don't know of a way to make bacula backups always fit within a set amount
of space. This could be dangerous. Depends on how far back you want your
backup data to go. If such a thing was possible using bacula, you wouldn't
want bacula to delete the last full backup or you wouldn't have any valid
backups for a given host. Even assuming bacula could do this and was smart
enough to not delete the latest full backup, you could encounter a
situation where you previously had a certain amount of data retention (say,
2 months), but as backup sizes increased that time slowly went down until
you only had 1 week of retention. Could be very dangerous, esp if
ransomware struck some of your clients. In the event of ransomware, you
will absolutely want backups going back further than 2 weeks. Also, a usage
based purge of backup data could be initiated by the ransomware encrypting
many files on your customer systems, resulting in a rapidly ballooning
backup size as your server backed up the encrypted files. In a worst case
scenario, a system configured the way you described could be prompted to
throw out its last good backups of a system by the influx of data from a
new ransomware infection.
Now on to discussion of your current issue:
If I recall correctly, you first started messaging this list within 2023. I
suspect that no volume is older than 365 days, and as such, no volume will
be reused, end of story. The volume, file, and job retention options are
all time based. If you've hit 100GB of utilization before 365 days was up,
you will need to change one of several things:
Increase available storage space.
Decrease storage utilization. For instance, maybe do full backups less
frequently, relying on differential and incremental backups for a longer
period of time.
Decrease your volume/job/file retention.
With the exception of increasing your storage space, as far as I know your
situation requires that you manually purge older volumes. I strongly advise
caution when doing this. The purge command is DANGEROUS. Running it without
parameters will delete all your database records for whichever file daemon
you select. Take catalog backups and restore those backups to a safe place
before doing anything related to purging or deleting existing volumes.
Understand the database restore process BEFORE you need it. If possible set
up a test environment to test any proposed changes of this scale.
Manually changing the volume retention period on a per volume basis might
make the volumes valid targets for pruning. Not sure. What I am pretty sure
about is that changing the default volume retention period in your config
won't retroactively change that value for your volumes that already exist.
Double check everything I've said here. My knowledge is limited, and I may
be incorrect on some points. Pretty sure on the first paragraph diagnosing
your issue and your list of options, though.
You can confirm the validity of my diagnosis by checking the dates
associated with your volumes.
As a matter of opinion, your 1GB volumes seem small, though that's not
necessarily something I can back up with anything other than opinion. I do
imagine that smaller 1GB volumes would be easier to export from cloud
hosted storage (which I think you are using, iirc). Don't feel pressured to
change this unless it bothers you or you have other knowledge supporting my
opinion. Changing maximum volume sizes could impact access to and use of
existing volumes. Be careful.
Regards,
Robert Gerber
402-237-8692
r...@craeon.net
On Sat, Jan 27, 2024 at 8:33 AM MylesDearBusiness via Bacula-users <
bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm having some problems with backup file configuration.
>
> I want the backup file area to consume 100GB and no more.
>
> I decided on file sizes of 1GB
>
> Pool {
>
> ...
>
> Volume Retention = 365 days # one year
> Maximum Volume Bytes = 1G # Limit Volume size to something
> reasonable
> Maximum Volumes = 100 # Limit number of Volumes in Pool
>
> Recycle = yes # Bacula can automatically recycle
> Volumes
> AutoPrune = yes # Prune expired volumes
>
> ...
>
> }
>
> I enabled the following schedule:
>
> #
> # When to do the backups, full backup on first sunday of the month,
> # differential (i.e. incremental since full) every other sunday,
> # and incremental backups other days
> Schedule {
> Name = "WeeklyCycle"
> Run = Full 1st sun at 23:05
> Run = Differential 2nd-5th sun at 23:05
> Run = Incremental mon-sat at 23:05
> }
>
> ... and what I saw is 100 files written and filled, and then all backups
> stopping in their tracks and no further backups produced.
>
> Every new job errors out.
>
> None of the older backup files were reused.
>
> Backups only resumed when I manually deleted the oldest volumes from
> bconsole, and stopped again when the maximum number of files had been
> reached
>
> I want automatic space management so that when the maximum number of
> volumes are created, the oldest ones are reused.
>
> I don't know how to set the "Volume Retention" accurately (as my backup
> sizes are not predictable, as I install new software or accumulate business
> data their size will likely increase),
> I want the backups to always fit within my prescribed amount of storage
> space and recycle that space when needed, without manual intervention.
>
> How can I achieve this ?
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bacula-users mailing list
> Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
>
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