Projects: Bacula Projects Roadmap 22 February 2004 Item 1: Implement Base jobs. What: A base job is sort of like a Full save except that you will want the FileSet to contain only files that are unlikely to change in the future (i.e. a snapshot of most of your system after installing it). After the base job has been run, when you are doing a Full save, you specify one or more Base jobs to be used. All files that have been backed up in the Base job/jobs but not modified will then be excluded from the backup. During a restore, the Base jobs will be automatically pulled in where necessary. Why: This is something none of the competition does, as far as we know (except BackupPC, which is a Perl program that saves to disk only). It is big win for the user, it makes Bacula stand out as offering a unique optimization that immediately saves time and money. Basically, imagine that you have 100 nearly identical Windows or Linux machine containing the OS and user files. Now for the OS part, a Base job will be backed up once, and rather than making 100 copies of the OS, there will be only one. If one or more of the systems have some files updated, no problem, they will be automatically restored. Notes: Huge savings in tape usage even for a single machine. Will require more resources because the DIR must send FD a list of files/attribs, and the FD must search the list and compare it for each file to be saved. Item 2: Job Data Spooling. What: Make the Storage daemon use intermediate file storage to buffer the data to disk before writing it to the tape. Why: This would be a nice project and is the most requested feature. Even though you may finish a client job quicker by spooling to disk, you still have to eventually get it onto tape. If intermediate disk buffering allows us to improve write bandwidth to tape, it may make sense. In addition, you can run multiple simultaneous jobs all spool to disk, then the data can be written one job at a time to the tape at full tape speed. This keeps the tape running smoothly and prevents blocks from different simultaneous jobs from being intermixed on the tape, which is very inefficient for restores. Notes: Need multiple spool directories. Should possibly be able to spool by Job type, ... Possibly need high and low spool data levels. Item 3: GUI for interactive restore Item 4: GUI for interactive backup What: The current interactive restore is implemented with a tty interface. It would be much nicer to be able to "see" the list of files backed up in typical GUI tree format. The same mechanism could also be used for creating ad-hoc backup FileSets (item 8). Why: Ease of use -- especially for the end user. Notes: Rather than implementing in Gtk, we probably should go directly for a Browser implementation, even if doing so meant the capability wouldn't be available until much later. Not only is there the question of Windows sites, most Solaris/HP/IRIX, etc, shops can't currently run Gtk programs without installing lots of stuff admins are very wary about. Real sysadmins will always use the command line anyway, and the user who's doing an interactive restore or backup of his own files will in most cases be on a Windows machine running Exploder. Item 5: Implement a Migration job type that will move the job data from one device to another. What: The ability to copy, move, or archive data that is on a device to another device is very important. Why: An ISP might want to backup to disk, but after 30 days migrate the data to tape backup and delete it from disk. Bacula should be able to handle this automatically. It needs to know what was put where, and when, and what to migrate -- it is a bit like retention periods. Doing so would allow space to be freed up for current backups while maintaining older data on tape drives. Notes: Migration could be triggered by: Number of Jobs Number of Volumes Age of Jobs Highwater size (keep total size) Lowwater mark Item 6: Embedded Perl Scripting (precursor to 7). What: On a configuration parameter, embed the Perl language in Bacula. Why: The embedded Perl scripting can be called to implement Events such as "Volume Name needed", "End of Tape", "Tape at x% of rated capacity", "Job started", "Job Ended", "Job error", ... Notes: This needs Events. Item 7: Implement Events (requires 6). What: When a particular user defined Event occurs, call the embedded Perl interpreter. Why: This will provide the ultimate in user customization for Bacula. Almost anything imaginable can be done if Events are called at the appropriate place. Notes: There is a certain amount of work to be done on how the user defines or "registers" events. Item 8: Multiple Storage Devices for a Single Job What: Allow any Job to use more than one Storage device. Why: With two devices, for example, the second device could have the next backup tape pre-mounted reducing operator intervention in the middle of the night. Item 9: Backup a Single Job Simultaneously to Multiple Storage Devices What: Make two copies of the backup data at the same time. Why: Large shops typically do this and then take one set of backups off-site. Some design work it needed in how to specify the type of backup (backup, archive, ...) for each Device. Item 10: Break the one-to-one Relationship between a Job and a Specific Storage Device (or Devices if #10 is implemented). What: Allow a Job to simply specify one or more MediaType, and the Storage daemon will select a device for it. In fact, the user should be able to specify one or more MediaType, Storage daemon, and/or device to be used. Why: To allow more flexibility in large shops that have multiple drives and/or multiple drives of different types. Item 11: Add Regular Expression Matching and Plug-ins to the FileSet Include statements. What: Allow users to specify wild-card and/or regular expressions to be matched in both the Include and Exclude directives in a FileSet. At the same time, allow users to define plug-ins to be called (based on regular expression/wild-card matching). Why: This would give the users the ultimate ability to control how files are backed up/restored. A user could write a plug-in knows how to backup his Oracle database without stopping/starting it, for example. Item 12: Implement data encryption (as opposed to communications encryption) What: Currently the data that is stored on the Volume is not encrypted. For confidentiality, encryption of data at the File daemon level is essential. Note, communications encryption encrypts the data when leaving the File daemon, then decrypts the data on entry to the Storage daemon. Data encryption encrypts the data in the File daemon and decrypts the data in the File daemon during a restore. Why: Large sites require this. Notes: The only algorithm that is needed is AES. http://csrc.nist.gov/CryptoToolkit/aes/ Item 13: New daemon communication protocol. What: The current daemon to daemon protocol is basically an ASCII printf() and sending the buffer. On the receiving end, the buffer is sscanf()ed to unpack it. The new scheme would retain the current ASCII sending, but would add an argc, argv like table driven scanner to replace sscanf. Why: Named fields will permit error checking to ensure that what is sent is what the receiver really wants. The fields can be in any order and additional fields can be ignored allowing better upward compatibility. Much better checking of the types and values passed can be done. Notes: These are internal improvements in the interest of the long-term stability and evolution of the program. On the one hand, the sooner they're done, the less code we have to rip up when the time comes to install them. On the other hand, they don't bring an immediately perceptible benefit to potential users. Completed items from last year's list: Item 1: Multiple simultaneous Jobs. (done) Item 3: Write the bscan program -- also write a bcopy program (done). Item 5: Implement Label templates (done). Item 6: Write a regression script (done) Item 9: Add SSL to daemon communications (For now, implement with stunnel) Item 10: Define definitive tape format (done)