On 8/2/05 8:56 AM, Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:
I'm also looking (well, planning to look) into Bacula as an alternative to Amanda. Couple of questions.
Can I have my backups go to the disk, instead of using tapes? Can I have some on disk, and some on tapes? On-site disk, off-site tapes combination?
Yes to all of the above.
Another question is about restores. How easy/automated are they?
If you've ever used the restore(8) shell, then you'll feel right at home. Essentially, you get a command-line view of the backed up file system. You can navigate with cd, ls, find, etc. You choose the files and/or directory trees to restore, specify where they should be restored, make sure the correct tapes are accessible, and voila!
If you've got multiple copies of a file, you can choose which version you want restored.
The ability to tell backup system "I want server.mycorp.com's /etc/foobar.conf from two months ago restored" and then simply sit back and relax while backup server is doing all the job automatically in the background is priceless. Is Bacula able to do that?
Pretty much, though the trick is in the telling. I haven't investigated whether it's possible to script that sort of thing; I've only used the restore shell.