Bacula Overview

Bacula
The leading Opensource Backup Solution

OpenSource Project
Bacula is a network backup solution, designed for
*BSD, Linux, Mac OS X, Unix and Windows systems.
Original project goals were to:
● backup any client from a Palm to a mainframe computer
● provide “Enterprise” features similar to the largest commercial applications
● assure data compatibility for 30 years
● use a Free and Open Source (GPL v2) license

Project History
Bacula = Backup + Dracula
● January 2000 – Project started
● 14 April 2002 – First release to Source Forge (version 1.16)
● 29 June 2006 – Release 1.38.11
● January 2007 – Release 2.0.0
● August 2007 – Release 2.2.0 (current 2.2.8)
● ...
Downloads 670,013 all versions 4.2 TB

Introduction
Do you do backups?
No
Yes, I did one last month
Yes, tarballs every week
Sometimes I rsync ...
Yes, CDs every week
I use custom scripts
Problems:
How do you find the files you need to restore?
How do you restore to a point in time?
What is on what medium?
How do you handle 2000 machines?
Government regulations

Introduction
Bacula to the rescue:
● Open Source (GPLv2)
● Centrally managed
● Network backup/restore
● Many platforms (*BSD, Linux, Mac OS X, Unix Win32, ...)
● Different media (Tape, disk, USB, CD/DVD)
● Reliable
● Knows what was backed up when and where
● Allows restoring files you want (Catalog + GUI)
● Restores to a point in time
● Scales to handle 10,000 machines

The Five Bacula Components
● Control and administration for everything is centralized
● Basic unit is a Job (one client, one set of files, ...)
● Schedules, initiates and supervises all Jobs
● Maintains the catalog (SQL database)
● Typically one Director except in very large shops
● Does file backup, restore and verification requested by Director
● Installed on each machine as a service (daemon)
● Communicates over network with Director and Storage daemon
● Needs access to all files to be backed up (root, SYSTEM)
● Typically multiple File daemons per Director; one for each machine
● Reads and writes data to the physical medium
● Disk, Tape, CD/DVD, USB, ...
● Accepts orders and authorization from the Director
● Accepts and returns data to/from File daemons (FD)
● Sends file storage location to Director -> Catalog
● Typically one per Director but with multiple devices

The Five Bacula Components
● Allows user or administrator to control Bacula
● Communicates with Director via network
● Start jobs, review Job output, query/modify catalog
● Consoles available
○ TTY (bconsole)
○ bat a Qt 4 (GUI) – most comprehensive
○ wxWidgets (GUI) – Linux, Unix, Win32
○ Gnome (GUI) – deprecated
○ Several web interfaces (bweb is most comprehensive)
● Restricted consoles permit users to restore their own files
● Only component not written by Bacula team
● SQL database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite) - unique
● Tracks Jobs run, Volumes used, File locations, ...
● Permits rapid restores
● Allows inquiry of when and where files were backed up
● Old data automatically pruned by Director
● Supports multiple databases for scaling

Features
● A central server and catalog with distributed backup
● All components communicate via the network.
● Internal scheduler for automatic and simultaneous job execution with priorities.
● Interactive restore with many options, for example:
○ current backup (most common)
○ prior backup of time and date
○ list of files/directories to restore
○ restore by JobId
● Simple administration with consoles (command line, GUI, and web)
● Labeled Volumes, to prevent accidental overwriting
● Support for ANSI / IBM labels
● Machine independent Volume data format - extensible
● Support for Unicode on Win32; UTF-8 on Unix
● Rescue CDROM for “bare metal” recovery (very complicated)

Bacula - Hardware Features
● Backups can span multiple volumes
● Multiple backups (jobs, clients, OSes) per volume
● Supports most tape drives with configurable Device resources
● Support for multiple drive autochangers (libraries)
● Supports tape barcode readers
● Extensive Pool and Volume library management
● Rapid restoration of individual files (one user reported 4 to 6
● hours with tar and 3 to 4 minutes with Bacula!).

Bacula - Security Feaures
● Daemon authorization with CRAM--MD5
● Director and Storage daemon can be run non--root
● MD5, SHA1, ... signatures for each file
● CRC checksum for each Volume block
● Restricted consoles and tray-monitors
● Communications (TLS) encryption
● Data (PKI) encryption
● Tripwire like intrusion detection (Verify)

Bacula - Jobs
who, what, where, when
Jobs are the basic unifying structure
Name – unique name (who)
Type – what to do: backup, Backup, Migrate, Admin, Restore
Level – level of detail of type: Full, Differential, Incremental
FileSet – what to files to backup
Client – where to get the files (machine name)
Storage – where to put the files (which hardware)
Pool – which set of Volumes (tapes, disk) to use
Schedule – when to do it

Bacula - Director Configuration File
Director {
Name = bacula-dir
Query File = “/usr/local/etc/query.sql”
Working Directory = “/var/bacula”
PID Directory = “/var/run”
Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 20
Password = “secret”
Messages = Standard
}

Job { # who, what, where, when
Name = “Music”
Type = Backup
Client = bcli
FileSet = “Full Set”
Storage = File
Schedule = “Weekly”
Pool = Standard
Messages = Standard
Write Bootstrap = “/var/bacula/bcli.bsr”
}

Client {
Name = bcli
Address = 10.0.0.1
Catalog = MyCatalog
Password = “secret--bcli”
File Retention = 30 days
Job Retention = 6 months
AutoPrune = yes
Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 20
}

Bacula Configuration - Fileset
● Include/Exclude files and/or directories
● Regex or wildcard for file/directory name selection
● Compression using similar selection criteria
● Which filesystem types to backup
● Backup OS Access Control List data (permissions)
● Sparse file handling
● Signature (MD5, SHA1, ...)

Bacula Configuration - Fileset
FileSet {
Name = “Full Set”
Include {
Options {
signature=SHA1;
regex = ".*.bak$";
exclude = yes
}
File = /
File = /usr
File = /var
}
Exclude {
File = /proc; File = /tmp; File = /sys; File = /.journal
}
}

Bacula Configuration - Schedule
Schedule {
Name = “Weekly”
Run = Level=Full 1st sun at 2:05
Run = Level=Differential 2nd--5th sun at 2:05
Run = Level=Incremental mon--sat at 2:05
}
Total directives per resource:
Director=27 Client=21 Storage=21 Job=60 Schedule=3, Device=52, ...

Bacula Configuration - Storage
Device {
Name = File
Archive Device = /var/bacula/backups
Device Type = File # Directory, DVD, FIFO, Tape
Media Type = File
Label Media = yes
Random Access = yes
...
}

Bacula Configuration - Storage
AutoChanger {
Name = LTO-Changer
Device = Drive-0, Drive-1
Changer Device = /dev/sg0
...
}
Device {
Name = Drive-0
Archive Device = /dev/nst0
Device Type = Tape # DVD, File, FIFO
Media Type = LTO-2
Autochanger = yes
...
}

Real Installation
● 53TB, 150,000,000 files, 90 clients, Linux
● 40TB, 40,000,000 files, 30 clients, Solaris
● LTO-3 libraries with several drives
● Large libraries with 100's of tape slots
● Libraries and drives connected with FC SAN
● 20GB, 200,000 files, 1 client, Linux disk and tape

Project Development
Project development
Site : http://www.bacula.org/
Development style:
○ SourceForge project
○ Developer's guide with code style guidelines
○ Developer SVN access. Currently 16 developers may commit
○ Patches and commits reviewed by K. Sibbald
○ Code tested using a regression test suite
○ Email list for developers (bacula-devel)
License:
○ GPL 2 copyright assigned to FSFE.
○ Freedom Task Force (FTF)

Resources
For users and system administrators
Manual: http://www.bacula.org/en/rel-manual/index.html
OS and Hardware compatibility lists (in manual)
Bugs reports: http://bugs.bacula.org/
Email support list: bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net
For developers
Docs: http://www.bacula.org/en/developers/index.html
Email list: bacula-devel@lists.sourceforge.net,
bacula-commits@lists.sourceforge.net
SVN at Source Forge

Credits
Thanks
Dan Langille who created the original presentation
Karl Cunningham who updated it
This presentation draws heavily on their work
A .pdf copy of this presentation can be found at:
http://www.bacula.org -> Presentations -> ...
Many Thanks!
samba@netstudent.polito.it

Bacula Overview

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