[Bacula-users] Experience summaries
Someone asked me what types of installations are using Bacula as their main backup system. I didn't know of any such experience reports, and so I thought I'd describe the installation where I'm using Bacula, and see what other types of setups are in use. Here goes... I've been using Bacula for a few months now to back up a couple dozen Linux and Solaris servers and workstations holding about 4TB of data. We perform daily backups to a changer holding two LTO tape drives. The tapes are rated at 400GB each, and we actually get between 400 and 700 GB on each, depending on the compressibility of the data. The only problems that I've encountered have all been of the "climbing the learning curve" variety, and I hope that those days are behind me. We're currently considering expanding to another similar installation, and moving our Mac and MS backups over to Bacula. -- John Kodis. --- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7637&alloc_id=16865&op=click ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] Experience summaries
Hello, On 1/4/2006 2:48 PM, John Kodis wrote: Someone asked me what types of installations are using Bacula as their main backup system. I didn't know of any such experience reports, Hmm. Perhaps some people with interesting installations might be reminded to send a small report for the bacula.org web site by your question?! and so I thought I'd describe the installation where I'm using Bacula, and see what other types of setups are in use. Here goes... Well,if you think it's interesting... my own installation consists of two old autoloaders (DLT and DDS based) and one single QIC drive. (Now that I think about it, I've got one more tape drive and a DVD writer on a second SD, but don't usually use them.) I back up a small number of servers and workstations (linux and windows, respectively) for... hmm... at least more than a year because I already cycled my Full backup volumes. Something like 18 months, I guess. I'm storing about 1.5 TB. One main purpose of my rather complicated setup is to stress-test Bacula here - I always have my setup here more complicated than what I install at customer's sites. Most installations I know about are rather straight-forward - after all, a backup should be as simple as possible. Typically, it's only the amount of data that determines how many drives and which tape technology people chose - apart from that, I never saw anything more complex than a handfull of pools and a single DIR with a single SD in one installation. The only problems that I've encountered have all been of the "climbing the learning curve" variety, and I hope that those days are behind me. Definitely there is a learning curve, but usually, once you managed that, you get what you want. More than you can say about some commercial backup solutions. We're currently considering expanding to another similar installation, and moving our Mac and MS backups over to Bacula. No problems expected... although I'm not sure about MacOS currenly. I think I recall reading that HFS and UFS are completely supported, i.e. resource forks and all sorts of stuff get saved and restored correctly. If that's important for you that's something to verify. Windows works great, especially since VSS support is included in bacula-fd.exe. Saves you lots of time setting up your filesets and scripts to run on your clients. Arno -- John Kodis. --- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7637&alloc_id=16865&op=click ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users -- IT-Service Lehmann[EMAIL PROTECTED] Arno Lehmann http://www.its-lehmann.de --- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=7637&alloc_id=16865&op=click ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] Experience summaries
Hello, in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you wrote: > > people chose - apart from that, I never saw anything more complex than a > handfull of pools and a single DIR with a single SD in one installation. Well, I'm running a DIR with two SD's here (actually two such setups). This works fine, but I'm not doing any fancy stuff yet, just learning and trying to understand some things as I go. The setup is the result of historical and economic reasons; one drive is a DDS autoloader (where media are dirt cheap), the other one is a SLR100 autoloader (which is much faster and can store much more data). What I'd _like_ to do is running two DIRs and two SD's in some kind of "cross-over" configuration, such that I have two independent systems (DIR + SD on each system), where both systems can access the volumes from the other system as well [the idea is to be able to recover even if one of the backup servers or parts of the hardware like a tape drive fail]. I think this requires that both DIRs share one database (otherwise access to the "other" volumes would be non-trivial), but I have no idea if such a mode of operation is possible at all. Is such a setup possible at all? Best regards, Wolfgang Denk -- Software Engineering: Embedded and Realtime Systems, Embedded Linux Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds. - Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month" --- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_idv37&alloc_id865&op=click ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] Experience summaries
On Thursday 05 January 2006 01:24, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Hello,
>
> in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you wrote:
> > people chose - apart from that, I never saw anything more complex than a
> > handfull of pools and a single DIR with a single SD in one installation.
>
> Well, I'm running a DIR with two SD's here (actually two such
> setups). This works fine, but I'm not doing any fancy stuff yet, just
> learning and trying to understand some things as I go. The setup is
> the result of historical and economic reasons; one drive is a DDS
> autoloader (where media are dirt cheap), the other one is a SLR100
> autoloader (which is much faster and can store much more data).
>
> What I'd _like_ to do is running two DIRs and two SD's in some kind
> of "cross-over" configuration, such that I have two independent
> systems (DIR + SD on each system), where both systems can access the
> volumes from the other system as well [the idea is to be able to
> recover even if one of the backup servers or parts of the hardware
> like a tape drive fail].
>
> I think this requires that both DIRs share one database (otherwise
> access to the "other" volumes would be non-trivial), but I have no
> idea if such a mode of operation is possible at all.
>
> Is such a setup possible at all?
My original idea some 5 years ago was to permit multiple Directors as well as
SDs and FDs. Today, you can run with multiple SDs and FDs, but running
multiple Directors on the same database is not yet possible. There are just
too many places in the current database access code where Bacula needs to
lock the multiple threads, and a second Director would almost surely turn it
into a catastrophy.
Having multiple Directors is something I would like to permit, but it will
take a lot of careful thought -- the two big problems that I see off hand is
that entering the directory and filenames into their appropriate tables has
to be atomic (i.e. locked at a higher level than the db -- or the code must
be changed), two Directors must be prohibited from trying to access the same
Medium (Volume) simultaneously.
--
Best regards,
Kern
(">
/\
V_V
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