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