3 Bacula Projects Roadmap
6 Below, you will find more information on future projects:
8 Item 1: Implement Base jobs.
9 Status: Voted by users not to be implemented in 1.37
11 What: A base job is sort of like a Full save except that you
12 will want the FileSet to contain only files that are
13 unlikely to change in the future (i.e. a snapshot of
14 most of your system after installing it). After the
15 base job has been run, when you are doing a Full save,
16 you specify one or more Base jobs to be used. All
17 files that have been backed up in the Base job/jobs but
18 not modified will then be excluded from the backup.
19 During a restore, the Base jobs will be automatically
20 pulled in where necessary.
22 Why: This is something none of the competition does, as far as
23 we know (except perhpas BackupPC, which is a Perl program that
24 saves to disk only). It is big win for the user, it
25 makes Bacula stand out as offering a unique
26 optimization that immediately saves time and money.
27 Basically, imagine that you have 100 nearly identical
28 Windows or Linux machine containing the OS and user
29 files. Now for the OS part, a Base job will be backed
30 up once, and rather than making 100 copies of the OS,
31 there will be only one. If one or more of the systems
32 have some files updated, no problem, they will be
33 automatically restored.
35 Notes: Huge savings in tape usage even for a single machine.
36 Will require more resources because the DIR must send
37 FD a list of files/attribs, and the FD must search the
38 list and compare it for each file to be saved.
40 Item 2: Add Plug-ins to the FileSet Include statements.
41 Status: In progress in 1.37 using Python scripting.
43 What: Allow users to specify wild-card and/or regular
44 expressions to be matched in both the Include and
45 Exclude directives in a FileSet. At the same time,
46 allow users to define plug-ins to be called (based on
47 regular expression/wild-card matching).
49 Why: This would give the users the ultimate ability to control
50 how files are backed up/restored. A user could write a
51 plug-in knows how to backup his Oracle database without
52 stopping/starting it, for example.
54 Item 3: Implement a Migration job type that will move the job
55 data from one device to another.
56 Status: Partially coded in 1.37 -- much more to do.
58 What: The ability to copy, move, or archive data that is on a
59 device to another device is very important.
61 Why: An ISP might want to backup to disk, but after 30 days
62 migrate the data to tape backup and delete it from
63 disk. Bacula should be able to handle this
64 automatically. It needs to know what was put where,
65 and when, and what to migrate -- it is a bit like
66 retention periods. Doing so would allow space to be
67 freed up for current backups while maintaining older
70 Notes: Migration could be triggered by:
74 Highwater size (keep total size)
77 Item 9: Implement data encryption (as opposed to communications
79 Status: Landon Fuller has agreed to work on this.
81 What: Currently the data that is stored on the Volume is not
82 encrypted. For confidentiality, encryption of data at
83 the File daemon level is essential.
84 Data encryption encrypts the data in the File daemon and
85 decrypts the data in the File daemon during a restore.
87 Why: Large sites require this.
90 Items completed for release 1.38.0:
91 #4 Embedded Python Scripting (implemented in all Daemons)
92 #5 Events that call a Python program (Implemented in all
93 daemons, but more cleanup work to be done).
94 #6 Select one from among Multiple Storage Devices for Job.
95 This is already implemented in 1.37.
96 #7 Single Job Writing to Multiple Storage Devices. This is
97 currently implemented with a Clone feature.
98 #- Full multiple drive Autochanger support (mostly implemented).
99 #- We will have built in support for communications
100 encryption (TLS) done by Landon Fuller.
101 # We will most likely have support for Unicode characters
102 (via UTF-8) on Win32 machines thanks to Thorsten Engle.
103 Item 8: Break the one-to-one Relationship between a Job and a
104 Specific Storage Device (or Devices if #10 is implemented).
106 Completed items from last year's list:
107 Item 1: Multiple simultaneous Jobs. (done)
108 Item 3: Write the bscan program -- also write a bcopy program (done).
109 Item 5: Implement Label templates (done).
110 Item 6: Write a regression script (done)
111 Item 9: Add SSL to daemon communications (For now, implement with
113 Item 10: Define definitive tape format (done)
114 Item 3: GUI for interactive restore. Partially Implemented in 1.34
115 Note, there is now a complete Webmin plugin, a partial
116 GNOME console, and an excellent wx-console GUI.
117 Item 4: GUI for interactive backup
118 Item 2: Job Data Spooling.
119 Done: Regular expression matching.
120 Item 10: New daemon communication protocol (this has been dropped).