On 16/09/2010 10:35, Tom Yates wrote: > On Thu, 16 Sep 2010, Kevin Thorpe wrote: > >> We have a bit of a problem with backups. We've been using bacula to tape >> and now trying to disk but it's a complete nightmare as regards tape >> management. > i suspect it's quite annoying when people try to re-engineer your request, > but i use bacula for some fairly large installations (several hundred LTO2 > tapes, 60-tape dual-drive stacker with barcode support, 5TB of staging > disc, that sort of thing) as well as my much-smaller home backups, and > find its tape management lovely - after i made one or two small but > important tweaks. > > if you're not already so sick of bacula that the mere name makes you break > out in hives, might i ask what problems you've been having? on- or > off-list is fine, as you prefer. You've hit the nail on the head. You've got the proper tape library hardware. Our ISP uses Bacula absolutely fine for our hosted servers. Our problem is mostly tape management. It will work fine for ages then we do something stupid like miss a tape and put it in in the morning, or we get a bank holiday and it starts getting picky about which tape it wants. For example we gave it monday's tape which was 'full' when it only has a 4 day retention period and it didn't like it and wanted the thursday tape. Why thursday I don't know, mon tue and wed should all have been available. Essentially it works absolutely fine but isn't very tolerant of human error. I've fiddled with it for ages and it's just irritating me. I'll definitely look into BackupPC for HDD backups but they're in the same offfice and don't give us the audit monthend tapes we are required to keep indefinitely.