Re: [Bacula-users] New Bacula Server with multiple disks
On 12/16/21 19:39, mac-eduki2.co.uk wrote: Hi Josh Thank you for your reply, advice and link. This is a remote server and as I do not need long term storage of backups it is really for disaster recovery - it is also not located anywhere near the clients. My hope is that if it does crash I will be able to rebuild it and take full backups before anything else fails. I do take on your comment about if one disk fails the whole server will be lost - would this not be the case with vchanger? No. Vchanger allows using multiple filesystems as one large emulated tape autoloader library, so each disk is an independent store of volume files, much like a magazine full of tapes in a real tape autoloader. It emulates a mult-magazine tape autoloader using one symlink for each virtual drive that links to the volume file currently loaded into that drive. It is an automated way of dynamically creating the symlinks needed to use N filesystems as one large store, rather than N disks as one filesystem. Cheers, Josh Fisher ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] New Bacula Server with multiple disks
Hi Josh Thank you for your reply, advice and link. This is a remote server and as I do not need long term storage of backups it is really for disaster recovery - it is also not located anywhere near the clients. My hope is that if it does crash I will be able to rebuild it and take full backups before anything else fails. I do take on your comment about if one disk fails the whole server will be lost - would this not be the case with vchanger? Kind regards Brad On 2021-12-16 12:01, Josh Fisher wrote: On 12/16/21 06:19, Josip Deanovic wrot On 2021-12-16 10:44, mac-eduki2.co.uk wrote: Good day I hope this message finds you all well. I have been running a small Bacula server with a single disk for a number of years now and it has become a vital part of our small business. I setup our original server with some help from the community and am very grateful to anyone who freely shares their knowledge. I am using Debian 9 and Bacula 7.4.4 I have 4 storage drives mounted as backup1-4 We have 20 plus clients and each one has their own pool and label. currently if I go to my single storage device all my client backup files are listed there I first question is: Can Bacula use my 4 disks in the same way filling up backup1 and than using backup2 etc? Would it be better to share out my clients between the 4 devices (disks) - and if so, should they each have a different file type for example file1 file2 etc? My approach is to figure out the storage first. If anyone has experience and can offer help on how a small Bacula server with multiple devices (disks) should be configured I would be most grateful. Hello Brad Bacula cannot fill your disk drives as you described but you can achieve the similar effect using other means. If I were you I would use LVM to include all the drives into a single LVM volume group. That would allow you to create a LVM logical volume with a single large file system you could use with Bacula as you see fit. It would also be a good idea to consider using RAID or similar kind of redundancy to prevent loss of data in case of a drive failure. Other options would include either use of symlinks or separate storage resource configurations. If you chose to use different storage devices for this purpose, you should make sure that they are using different MediaType. IMHO, the use of RAID is critical, and not optional, when LVM / single filesystem is to be used. A single disk failure would affect the entire filesystem. A 4-disk group is 4 times as likely to fail. If the disks are in hot swap bays, then I would consider using vchanger (https://sourceforge.net/projects/vchanger/), which allows using all disks as one virtual tape library and also allows swapping disks in and out for archival or off-site storage use. Vchanger is intended for removable RDX/USB disks, but works the same for hot swap SATA. ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] New Bacula Server with multiple disks
Hi Josip Thank you for your reply and advice. I am going to look into creating a volume group. Kind regards Brad On 2021-12-16 11:19, Josip Deanovic wrote: On 2021-12-16 10:44, mac-eduki2.co.uk wrote: Good day I hope this message finds you all well. I have been running a small Bacula server with a single disk for a number of years now and it has become a vital part of our small business. I setup our original server with some help from the community and am very grateful to anyone who freely shares their knowledge. I am using Debian 9 and Bacula 7.4.4 I have 4 storage drives mounted as backup1-4 We have 20 plus clients and each one has their own pool and label. currently if I go to my single storage device all my client backup files are listed there I first question is: Can Bacula use my 4 disks in the same way filling up backup1 and than using backup2 etc? Would it be better to share out my clients between the 4 devices (disks) - and if so, should they each have a different file type for example file1 file2 etc? My approach is to figure out the storage first. If anyone has experience and can offer help on how a small Bacula server with multiple devices (disks) should be configured I would be most grateful. Hello Brad Bacula cannot fill your disk drives as you described but you can achieve the similar effect using other means. If I were you I would use LVM to include all the drives into a single LVM volume group. That would allow you to create a LVM logical volume with a single large file system you could use with Bacula as you see fit. It would also be a good idea to consider using RAID or similar kind of redundancy to prevent loss of data in case of a drive failure. Other options would include either use of symlinks or separate storage resource configurations. If you chose to use different storage devices for this purpose, you should make sure that they are using different MediaType. Regards! ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] New Bacula Server with multiple disks
On 12/16/21 12:41, dmitri maziuk wrote: What kind of drives? In what kind of chassis? If I were setting this up from scratch, I'd go with a ZFS raidz-1 on 3 drives and a (large-ish) SSD in the 4th slot for ZFS write cache and job spool. Unless there's 5th disk: system, in which case I'd use an SSD there as well and put ZFS write cache on that instead. That is ALMOST exactly what I am doing. I have four rotating sets of 1TB drives set up as a ZFS pool in an external hot-plug SATA chassis, as the destination pool for my archive copy jobs. Media change is as simple as this: # zpool export arcpool [physically swap drives] # zpool import arcpool # rm /arcpool/* All four sets of drives have the same ZFS pool name, so it all Just Works. -- Phil Stracchino Babylon Communications ph...@caerllewys.net p...@co.ordinate.org Landline: +1.603.293.8485 Mobile: +1.603.998.6958 ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] New Bacula Server with multiple disks
On 2021-12-16 3:44 AM, mac-eduki2.co.uk wrote: Good day I hope this message finds you all well. I have been running a small Bacula server with a single disk for a number of years now and it has become a vital part of our small business. I setup our original server with some help from the community and am very grateful to anyone who freely shares their knowledge. I am using Debian 9 and Bacula 7.4.4 I have 4 storage drives mounted as backup1-4 What kind of drives? In what kind of chassis? If I were setting this up from scratch, I'd go with a ZFS raidz-1 on 3 drives and a (large-ish) SSD in the 4th slot for ZFS write cache and job spool. Unless there's 5th disk: system, in which case I'd use an SSD there as well and put ZFS write cache on that instead. Dima ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] New Bacula Server with multiple disks
>Can Bacula use my 4 disks in the same way filling up backup1 and than using backup2 etc? The short answer is yes. We've been doing this for over a decade using sym links to create one logical Bacula storage area that then points off to 40-50 disks worth of volume data on each server. In general, I would agree with the RAID recommendation given the few drives that you have. One option, if you can afford it, would be to double your disk count and create a RAID 10. Since at the time of creation, we were not able to afford RAID setups with that amount of disks and backup servers that we have, I created an application that "stripes" our completed backup volume data across all the JBOD disks on a given server thus if we lose one disk, it lessens the likelihood that we lose an entire sequence of backup data. It also helps to test the drives and root out suspect drives before they totally fail - which allows us to then copy all the good backup volumes off of it and take it out of circulation. cheers, --tom ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] New Bacula Server with multiple disks
On 2021-12-16 13:01, Josh Fisher wrote: IMHO, the use of RAID is critical, and not optional, when LVM / single filesystem is to be used. A single disk failure would affect the entire filesystem. A 4-disk group is 4 times as likely to fail. If the disks are in hot swap bays, then I would consider using vchanger (https://sourceforge.net/projects/vchanger/), which allows using all disks as one virtual tape library and also allows swapping disks in and out for archival or off-site storage use. Vchanger is intended for removable RDX/USB disks, but works the same for hot swap SATA. I agree. BTW, LVM supports redundancy as well. Check lvmraid(7). Regards! -- Josip Deanovic ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] New Bacula Server with multiple disks
On 12/16/21 06:19, Josip Deanovic wrote: On 2021-12-16 10:44, mac-eduki2.co.uk wrote: Good day I hope this message finds you all well. I have been running a small Bacula server with a single disk for a number of years now and it has become a vital part of our small business. I setup our original server with some help from the community and am very grateful to anyone who freely shares their knowledge. I am using Debian 9 and Bacula 7.4.4 I have 4 storage drives mounted as backup1-4 We have 20 plus clients and each one has their own pool and label. currently if I go to my single storage device all my client backup files are listed there I first question is: Can Bacula use my 4 disks in the same way filling up backup1 and than using backup2 etc? Would it be better to share out my clients between the 4 devices (disks) - and if so, should they each have a different file type for example file1 file2 etc? My approach is to figure out the storage first. If anyone has experience and can offer help on how a small Bacula server with multiple devices (disks) should be configured I would be most grateful. Hello Brad Bacula cannot fill your disk drives as you described but you can achieve the similar effect using other means. If I were you I would use LVM to include all the drives into a single LVM volume group. That would allow you to create a LVM logical volume with a single large file system you could use with Bacula as you see fit. It would also be a good idea to consider using RAID or similar kind of redundancy to prevent loss of data in case of a drive failure. Other options would include either use of symlinks or separate storage resource configurations. If you chose to use different storage devices for this purpose, you should make sure that they are using different MediaType. IMHO, the use of RAID is critical, and not optional, when LVM / single filesystem is to be used. A single disk failure would affect the entire filesystem. A 4-disk group is 4 times as likely to fail. If the disks are in hot swap bays, then I would consider using vchanger (https://sourceforge.net/projects/vchanger/), which allows using all disks as one virtual tape library and also allows swapping disks in and out for archival or off-site storage use. Vchanger is intended for removable RDX/USB disks, but works the same for hot swap SATA. ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] New Bacula Server with multiple disks
On 2021-12-16 10:44, mac-eduki2.co.uk wrote: Good day I hope this message finds you all well. I have been running a small Bacula server with a single disk for a number of years now and it has become a vital part of our small business. I setup our original server with some help from the community and am very grateful to anyone who freely shares their knowledge. I am using Debian 9 and Bacula 7.4.4 I have 4 storage drives mounted as backup1-4 We have 20 plus clients and each one has their own pool and label. currently if I go to my single storage device all my client backup files are listed there I first question is: Can Bacula use my 4 disks in the same way filling up backup1 and than using backup2 etc? Would it be better to share out my clients between the 4 devices (disks) - and if so, should they each have a different file type for example file1 file2 etc? My approach is to figure out the storage first. If anyone has experience and can offer help on how a small Bacula server with multiple devices (disks) should be configured I would be most grateful. Hello Brad Bacula cannot fill your disk drives as you described but you can achieve the similar effect using other means. If I were you I would use LVM to include all the drives into a single LVM volume group. That would allow you to create a LVM logical volume with a single large file system you could use with Bacula as you see fit. It would also be a good idea to consider using RAID or similar kind of redundancy to prevent loss of data in case of a drive failure. Other options would include either use of symlinks or separate storage resource configurations. If you chose to use different storage devices for this purpose, you should make sure that they are using different MediaType. Regards! -- Josip Deanovic ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
[Bacula-users] New Bacula Server with multiple disks
Good day I hope this message finds you all well. I have been running a small Bacula server with a single disk for a number of years now and it has become a vital part of our small business. I setup our original server with some help from the community and am very grateful to anyone who freely shares their knowledge. I am using Debian 9 and Bacula 7.4.4 I have 4 storage drives mounted as backup1-4 We have 20 plus clients and each one has their own pool and label. currently if I go to my single storage device all my client backup files are listed there I first question is: Can Bacula use my 4 disks in the same way filling up backup1 and than using backup2 etc? Would it be better to share out my clients between the 4 devices (disks) - and if so, should they each have a different file type for example file1 file2 etc? My approach is to figure out the storage first. If anyone has experience and can offer help on how a small Bacula server with multiple devices (disks) should be configured I would be most grateful. Kind regards Brad ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
