[CentOS] Bacula

Tue Aug 2 15:56:54 UTC 2005
Aleksandar Milivojevic <alex at milivojevic.org>

Quoting Paul Heinlein <heinlein at madboa.com>:

> Our main backup server runs bacula on CentOS 3. Storage is handled by 
> a Dell PowerVault 122T with a single LTO-1 drive. Obviously, we don't 
> handle a huge amount of data. :-)

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?

Another question is about restores.  How easy/automated are they?  
Amanda has a
database of what file system is on what tape (and where on the tape).  And
that's about it.  It has no idea of what files are actually contained inthere,
what versions of the file, or where inside the dump/tar are the files.  This
makes restores a bit tedious and slow job, since 90% of time only single file
(or set of files) is needed from backup, not entire file system.

I'm looking to something more like Veritas and Legato solution where backup
server keeps tabs on the actuall files (what version, on which tape, and
location on the tape).  Is it easy to browse for particular file that I 
need to
restore, and then simply have Bacula do the rest (load correct tape, rewind it
to where the file is stored and extract it)?

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?

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