Backup Central

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Bacula 1.38.11

Dear list,

At first, my apologies for the length of this mail, I hope it will be read=
=20
anyway.
I am writing this eMail in hope of some help (as nearly everybode does =
).=20
Our pilot is about to come to his end and customer is planning to spread=20
bacula systemwide.

Before I finally can do that, I need to verify some things. To let you join=
my=20
thoughts, here comes the current setup:

Testmachine running SuSE and Bacula 1.38.11 (was the most actual at time of=
=20
installation) and backing up some machines to HDD.
Everything works fine (if it wouldn't, there won't be the "master" plan =
).
Every day, we do a tar to a single tape, containing the volumes of bacula, =
the=20
let's call them "tape-girlies" change the tape every day.

=46or the final arrangement, there will be (beside the server with big=20
HDD-space) a tape-library.

We do our tar to be able to react in case of big bang, e.g. server room get=
s=20
on fire. So we can set up a new server, get our bacula-configs back, copy=20
back the volumes from tape to hdd and use bscan to pump them back inside th=
e=20
DB and get our data back.

Naturally, customer wants the same possibilities with the new (and let's sa=
y=20
that not quite cheap) equipment.

Long speech, sorry again. I guess here my questions start:

I guess I can't use the library together with tar, so it would be time to l=
et=20
bacula operate the tapes.

But how can I achieve the scenario mentioned above? Will "MigrateJob" be my=
=20
guarding angel to bring the needed files to tape? As I said, tapes are to b=
e=20
changed every day and taken offsite into the safe.

So what we need: We need a possibility to restore from tapes from the day=20
before.
It that achievable with Bacula and if "yes", how?
How do ppl on this list use the libraries?
I prefer harddrive-backup, no question, but IMHO one needs a solution, if=20
server and/or harddrives cross river jordan. I am quite sure that I am not=
=20
the only one thinking about and having this problem so please enlighten=20
me :-)

If my remarks are too confusing please be so kind and ask further. This is =
a=20
quite wellknown customer here in germany and I guess I'd be able to share=20
some experiences with a site like that.

Kindly regards,

Benni
=2D-=20
Benjamin Zeller
Ing.-B=FCro Hohmann
Bahnhofstr. 34
D-82515 Wolfratshausen

Tel.: +49 (0)8171 347 88 12
Mobil: +49 (0)160 99 11 55 23
=46ax: +49 (0)8171 910 778
mailto: zeller < at > ib...

http://www.ibh-wor.de

Hello,

I won't comment on your final arrangment, but let others on this list who are
more knowledgable about these techniques answer.

However, for getting your catalog back. I suggest you avoid bscan if at all
possible. It works, and it is reliable, but it is *slow*. You can always use
it as a last resort.

However, your main plan should restore the database by one of the two (of
both) following ways:

1. Save the catalog with the standard Bacula job and script, but write a .bsr
file, and write that bsr file to your tar tape. With the bsr file, you can
either bextract directly from the volume, or create a dummy database
with the database creation scripts, then use Bacula to restore from
the bsr.

2. Write an ASCII copy of the database to your tar file.

Regards,

Kern

On Friday 16 February 2007 18:02, Benjamin E. Zeller wrote:
Bacula 1.38.11

Dear list,


At first, my apologies for the length of this mail, I hope it will be read
anyway.
I am writing this eMail in hope of some help (as nearly everybode does
). Our pilot is about to come to his end and customer is planning to spread
bacula systemwide.

Before I finally can do that, I need to verify some things. To let you join
my thoughts, here comes the current setup:

Testmachine running SuSE and Bacula 1.38.11 (was the most actual at time of
installation) and backing up some machines to HDD.
Everything works fine (if it wouldn't, there won't be the "master" plan
). Every day, we do a tar to a single tape, containing the volumes of
bacula, the let's call them "tape-girlies" change the tape every day.

For the final arrangement, there will be (beside the server with big
HDD-space) a tape-library.

We do our tar to be able to react in case of big bang, e.g. server room
gets on fire. So we can set up a new server, get our bacula-configs back,
copy back the volumes from tape to hdd and use bscan to pump them back
inside the DB and get our data back.

Naturally, customer wants the same possibilities with the new (and let's
say that not quite cheap) equipment.

Long speech, sorry again. I guess here my questions start:

I guess I can't use the library together with tar, so it would be time to
let bacula operate the tapes.

But how can I achieve the scenario mentioned above? Will "MigrateJob" be my
guarding angel to bring the needed files to tape? As I said, tapes are to
be changed every day and taken offsite into the safe.

So what we need: We need a possibility to restore from tapes from the day
before.
It that achievable with Bacula and if "yes", how?
How do ppl on this list use the libraries?
I prefer harddrive-backup, no question, but IMHO one needs a solution, if
server and/or harddrives cross river jordan. I am quite sure that I am not
the only one thinking about and having this problem so please enlighten
me :-)

If my remarks are too confusing please be so kind and ask further. This is
a quite wellknown customer here in germany and I guess I'd be able to share
some experiences with a site like that.

Kindly regards,

Benni

To ensure that I understand, here's what I think you want to do.

Use bacula for backups to disk-based volumes.
Create backups of these volumes to a tape library.
Tapes are taken offsite.

I think that the feature of bacula you want is copying jobs, which is
currenly in development. However, I can think of a couple of things you
can do.

(1) Bacula can use multiple catalogues. Use a second catalogue for
backing up (or archiving) the disk volumes to tape. You can set the
priority of the archiving job to ensure that it doesn't start until
after the backups have completed. You could also have a pre-flight
script that dumps the first catalogue and include it in the
tape-archiving. You could have a final (after archiving) job that dumps
the second catalogue. This won't be very large since the archive will
contain a small number of large files. You could probably save it to CD
or transfer it somewhere else for disaster recovery.

(2) Instead of tar use star. It can use different header types that
enable it to store ACLs and files larger than 2G. It also has a
multi-volume mode and a new-volume-script option. You can write your
own scripts to operate the tape-library using the mtx command. If you
are using multiple drives, you will need to use lockfiles or semaphores
to avoid conflicts with the user of the changer.

Hope this helps.

Kel Raywood

On Fri, 16 Feb 2007, Kern Sibbald wrote:
... your main plan should restore the database by one of the two (of
both) following ways:

1. Save the catalog with the standard Bacula job and script, but write
a .bsr file, and write that bsr file to your tar tape. ...

Or email it off-site. The bsr file of my catalog with over two million
file-records is only a few kB of ascii.

2. Write an ASCII copy of the database to your tar file.

It doesn't have to be ASCII. With a postgresql db, I use "pg_dump -F c"
which saves in compressed format that can be restored with pg_restore.

Kel

Attachments: Message as HTML

On Friday 16 February 2007 19:29, Kel Raywood wrote:

At first I must apologize for not answering earlier. I had to test all your=
=20
suggestions and so I wasn't able to respond earlier

To ensure that I understand, here's what I think you want to do.

Use bacula for backups to disk-based volumes.
Create backups of these volumes to a tape library.
Tapes are taken offsite.

You exactly hit the point :-)


I think that the feature of bacula you want is copying jobs, which is
currenly in development. However, I can think of a couple of things you
can do.

That was my guess too, yes.


(1) Bacula can use multiple catalogues. Use a second catalogue for
backing up (or archiving) the disk volumes to tape. You can set the
priority of the archiving job to ensure that it doesn't start until
after the backups have completed. You could also have a pre-flight
script that dumps the first catalogue and include it in the
tape-archiving. You could have a final (after archiving) job that dumps
the second catalogue. This won't be very large since the archive will
contain a small number of large files. You could probably save it to CD
or transfer it somewhere else for disaster recovery.

Didn't take that into further consideration yet, because I prefer an appro=
ach=20
in some matter of (2) (so does the customer).


(2) Instead of tar use star. It can use different header types that
enable it to store ACLs and files larger than 2G. It also has a
multi-volume mode and a new-volume-script option. You can write your
own scripts to operate the tape-library using the mtx command. If you
are using multiple drives, you will need to use lockfiles or semaphores
to avoid conflicts with the user of the changer.

As a matter of fact, the library isn't there yet. At the moment, we are usi=
ng=20
a single tapedrive as we are still in our pilot. Nevertheless I am already=
=20
able to test this procedure, as the volumefiles of our pilot don't fit to o=
ne=20
tape anymore.
So I was able to test tar with multiple volumes. As I didn't know star befo=
re,=20
I did some further research with tar. tar knows two options which may suite=
=20
my needs, which are --info-script and --new-volumescript.
What I am doing now, is to call a script, which ejects the volume, does=20
a "mt -f /dev/st0 status" and waits until the next volume is inserted and s=
o=20
tar doesn't wait for someone pressing enterkey. It is in testingstage since=
=20
friday and it looks as if it works (will verify that on wednesday).
My plan is, to use tar with a modified script which takes the next tape in =
the=20
library.
As one of the last questions: What I don't get yet, is the difference=20
of --info-script and --new-volume-script. It is kind of hard to search goog=
le=20
for examples, so I hope that anyone on this list may provide some knowledge.


Hope this helps.


It really did, thanks a lot.

Kel Raywood


Greetings,

Benni
=2D-=20
Benjamin E. Zeller
Ing.-B=FCro Hohmann
Bahnhofstr. 34
D-82515 Wolfratshausen

Tel.: +49 (0)8171 347 88 12
Mobil: +49 (0)160 99 11 55 23
=46ax: +49 (0)8171 910 778
mailto: zeller < at > ib...

http://www.ibh-wor.de