Projects: Bacula Projects Roadmap Status updated 25 February 2010 Summary: * => item complete Item 1: Ability to restart failed jobs Item 2: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options Item 3: Data encryption on storage daemon Item 4: Add ability to Verify any specified Job. Item 5: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management Item 6: Allow FD to initiate a backup Item 7: Implement Storage daemon compression Item 8: Reduction of communications bandwidth for a backup Item 9: Ability to reconnect a disconnected comm line Item 10: Start spooling even when waiting on tape Item 11: Include all conf files in specified directory Item 12: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job Item 13: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month Item 14: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output Item 15: Message mailing based on backup types Item 16: Ability to import/export Bacula database entities Item 17: Implementation of running Job speed limit. Item 18: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types Item 19: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size Item 20: Allow FileSet inclusion/exclusion by creation/mod times Item 21: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape Item 22: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters Item 23: Automatic disabling of devices Item 24: Ability to defer Batch Insert to a later time Item 25: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes to Storage resource Item 26: Enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries Item 27: Bacula Dir, FD and SD to support proxies Item 28: Add Minumum Spool Size directive Item 29: Handle Windows Encrypted Files using Win raw encryption Item 30: Implement a Storage device like Amazon's S3. Item 31: Convert tray monitor on Windows to a stand alone program Item 32: Relabel disk volume after recycling Item 33: Command that releases all drives in an autochanger Item 34: Run bscan on a remote storage daemon from within bconsole. Item 35: Implement a Migration job type that will create a reverse Item 36: Job migration between different SDs Item 37: Concurrent spooling and despooling withini a single job. Item 39: Extend the verify code to make it possible to verify Item 40: Separate "Storage" and "Device" in the bacula-dir.conf Item 41: Least recently used device selection for tape drives in autochanger. Item 1: Ability to restart failed jobs Date: 26 April 2009 Origin: Kern/Eric Status: What: Often jobs fail because of a communications line drop or max run time, cancel, or some other non-critical problem. Currrently any data saved is lost. This implementation should modify the Storage daemon so that it saves all the files that it knows are completely backed up to the Volume The jobs should then be marked as incomplete and a subsequent Incremental Accurate backup will then take into account all the previously saved job. Why: Avoids backuping data already saved. Notes: Requires Accurate to restart correctly. Must completed have a minimum volume of data or files stored on Volume before enabling. Item 2: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options Date: 15 December 2006 Origin: Gregory Brauer (greg at wildbrain dot com) and Florian Schnabel Status: What: Currently, Bacula only understands how to deal with weeks of the month or weeks of the year in schedules. This makes it impossible to do a true weekly rotation of tapes. There will always be a discontinuity that will require disruptive manual intervention at least monthly or yearly because week boundaries never align with month or year boundaries. A solution would be to add a new syntax that defines (at least) a start timestamp, and repetition period. An easy option to skip a certain job on a certain date. Why: Rotated backups done at weekly intervals are useful, and Bacula cannot currently do them without extensive hacking. You could then easily skip tape backups on holidays. Especially if you got no autochanger and can only fit one backup on a tape that would be really handy, other jobs could proceed normally and you won't get errors that way. Notes: Here is an example syntax showing a 3-week rotation where full Backups would be performed every week on Saturday, and an incremental would be performed every week on Tuesday. Each set of tapes could be removed from the loader for the following two cycles before coming back and being reused on the third week. Since the execution times are determined by intervals from a given point in time, there will never be any issues with having to adjust to any sort of arbitrary time boundary. In the example provided, I even define the starting schedule as crossing both a year and a month boundary, but the run times would be based on the "Repeat" value and would therefore happen weekly as desired. Schedule { Name = "Week 1 Rotation" #Saturday. Would run Dec 30, Jan 20, Feb 10, etc. Run { Options { Type = Full Start = 2006-12-30 01:00 Repeat = 3w } } #Tuesday. Would run Jan 2, Jan 23, Feb 13, etc. Run { Options { Type = Incremental Start = 2007-01-02 01:00 Repeat = 3w } } } Schedule { Name = "Week 2 Rotation" #Saturday. Would run Jan 6, Jan 27, Feb 17, etc. Run { Options { Type = Full Start = 2007-01-06 01:00 Repeat = 3w } } #Tuesday. Would run Jan 9, Jan 30, Feb 20, etc. Run { Options { Type = Incremental Start = 2007-01-09 01:00 Repeat = 3w } } } Schedule { Name = "Week 3 Rotation" #Saturday. Would run Jan 13, Feb 3, Feb 24, etc. Run { Options { Type = Full Start = 2007-01-13 01:00 Repeat = 3w } } #Tuesday. Would run Jan 16, Feb 6, Feb 27, etc. Run { Options { Type = Incremental Start = 2007-01-16 01:00 Repeat = 3w } } } Notes: Kern: I have merged the previously separate project of skipping jobs (via Schedule syntax) into this. Item 3: Data encryption on storage daemon Origin: Tobias Barth Date: 04 February 2009 Status: new What: The storage demon should be able to do the data encryption that can currently be done by the file daemon. Why: This would have 2 advantages: 1) one could encrypt the data of unencrypted tapes by doing a migration job 2) the storage daemon would be the only machine that would have to keep the encryption keys. Notes from Landon: As an addendum to the feature request, here are some crypto implementation details I wrote up regarding SD-encryption back in Jan 2008: http://www.mail-archive.com/bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net/msg28860.html Item 4: Add ability to Verify any specified Job. Date: 17 January 2008 Origin: portrix.net Hamburg, Germany. Contact: Christian Sabelmann Status: 70% of the required Code is part of the Verify function since v. 2.x What: The ability to tell Bacula which Job should verify instead of automatically verify just the last one. Why: It is sad that such a powerfull feature like Verify Jobs (VolumeToCatalog) is restricted to be used only with the last backup Job of a client. Actual users who have to do daily Backups are forced to also do daily Verify Jobs in order to take advantage of this useful feature. This Daily Verify after Backup conduct is not always desired and Verify Jobs have to be sometimes scheduled. (Not necessarily scheduled in Bacula). With this feature Admins can verify Jobs once a Week or less per month, selecting the Jobs they want to verify. This feature is also not to difficult to implement taking in account older bug reports about this feature and the selection of the Job to be verified. Notes: For the verify Job, the user could select the Job to be verified from a List of the latest Jobs of a client. It would also be possible to verify a certain volume. All of these would naturaly apply only for Jobs whose file information are still in the catalog. Item 5: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management Date: 8 November 2005, November 11, 2005 Origin: Adam Thornton , Arno Lehmann Status: What: Make Bacula manage tape life cycle information, tape reuse times and drive cleaning cycles. Why: All three parts of this project are important when operating backups. We need to know which tapes need replacement, and we need to make sure the drives are cleaned when necessary. While many tape libraries and even autoloaders can handle all this automatically, support by Bacula can be helpful for smaller (older) libraries and single drives. Limiting the number of times a tape is used might prevent tape errors when using tapes until the drives can't read it any more. Also, checking drive status during operation can prevent some failures (as I [Arno] had to learn the hard way...) Notes: First, Bacula could (and even does, to some limited extent) record tape and drive usage. For tapes, the number of mounts, the amount of data, and the time the tape has actually been running could be recorded. Data fields for Read and Write time and Number of mounts already exist in the catalog (I'm not sure if VolBytes is the sum of all bytes ever written to that volume by Bacula). This information can be important when determining which media to replace. The ability to mark Volumes as "used up" after a given number of write cycles should also be implemented so that a tape is never actually worn out. For the tape drives known to Bacula, similar information is interesting to determine the device status and expected life time: Time it's been Reading and Writing, number of tape Loads / Unloads / Errors. This information is not yet recorded as far as I [Arno] know. A new volume status would be necessary for the new state, like "Used up" or "Worn out". Volumes with this state could be used for restores, but not for writing. These volumes should be migrated first (assuming migration is implemented) and, once they are no longer needed, could be moved to a Trash pool. The next step would be to implement a drive cleaning setup. Bacula already has knowledge about cleaning tapes. Once it has some information about cleaning cycles (measured in drive run time, number of tapes used, or calender days, for example) it can automatically execute tape cleaning (with an autochanger, obviously) or ask for operator assistance loading a cleaning tape. The final step would be to implement TAPEALERT checks not only when changing tapes and only sending the information to the administrator, but rather checking after each tape error, checking on a regular basis (for example after each tape file), and also before unloading and after loading a new tape. Then, depending on the drives TAPEALERT state and the known drive cleaning state Bacula could automatically schedule later cleaning, clean immediately, or inform the operator. Implementing this would perhaps require another catalog change and perhaps major changes in SD code and the DIR-SD protocol, so I'd only consider this worth implementing if it would actually be used or even needed by many people. Implementation of these projects could happen in three distinct sub-projects: Measuring Tape and Drive usage, retiring volumes, and handling drive cleaning and TAPEALERTs. Item 6: Allow FD to initiate a backup Origin: Frank Volf (frank at deze dot org) Date: 17 November 2005 Status: What: Provide some means, possibly by a restricted console that allows a FD to initiate a backup, and that uses the connection established by the FD to the Director for the backup so that a Director that is firewalled can do the backup. Why: Makes backup of laptops much easier. Notes: - The FD already has code for the monitor interface - It could be nice to have a .job command that lists authorized jobs. - Commands need to be restricted on the Director side (for example by re-using the runscript flag) - The Client resource can be used to authorize the connection - In a first time, the client can't modify job parameters - We need a way to run a status command to follow job progression This project consists of the following points 1. Modify the FD to have a "mini-console" interface that permits it to connect to the Director and start a backup job of itself. 2. The list of jobs that can be started by the FD are defined in the Director (possibly via a restricted console). 3. Modify the existing tray monitor code in the Win32 FD so that it is a separate program from the FD. 4. The tray monitor program should be extended to permit initiating a backup. 5. No new Director directives should be added without prior consultation with the Bacula developers. 6. The comm line used by the FD to connect to the Director should be re-used by the Director to do the backup. This feature is partially implemented in the Director. 7. The FD may have a new directive that allows it to start a backup when the FD starts. 8. The console interface to the FD should be extended to permit a properly authorized console to initiate a backup via the FD. Item 7: Implement Storage daemon compression Date: 18 December 2006 Origin: Vadim A. Umanski , e-mail umanski@ext.ru Status: What: The ability to compress backup data on the SD receiving data instead of doing that on client sending data. Why: The need is practical. I've got some machines that can send data to the network 4 or 5 times faster than compressing them (I've measured that). They're using fast enough SCSI/FC disk subsystems but rather slow CPUs (ex. UltraSPARC II). And the backup server has got a quite fast CPUs (ex. Dual P4 Xeons) and quite a low load. When you have 20, 50 or 100 GB of raw data - running a job 4 to 5 times faster - that really matters. On the other hand, the data can be compressed 50% or better - so losing twice more space for disk backup is not good at all. And the network is all mine (I have a dedicated management/provisioning network) and I can get as high bandwidth as I need - 100Mbps, 1000Mbps... That's why the server-side compression feature is needed! Notes: Item 8: Reduction of communications bandwidth for a backup Date: 14 October 2008 Origin: Robin O'Leary (Equiinet) Status: What: Using rdiff techniques, Bacula could significantly reduce the network data transfer volume to do a backup. Why: Faster backup across the Internet Notes: This requires retaining certain data on the client during a Full backup that will speed up subsequent backups. Item 9: Ability to reconnect a disconnected comm line Date: 26 April 2009 Origin: Kern/Eric Status: What: Often jobs fail because of a communications line drop. In that case, Bacula should be able to reconnect to the other daemon and resume the job. Why: Avoids backuping data already saved. Notes: *Very* complicated from a design point of view because of authenication. Item 10: Start spooling even when waiting on tape Origin: Tobias Barth Date: 25 April 2008 Status: What: If a job can be spooled to disk before writing it to tape, it should be spooled immediately. Currently, bacula waits until the correct tape is inserted into the drive. Why: It could save hours. When bacula waits on the operator who must insert the correct tape (e.g. a new tape or a tape from another media pool), bacula could already prepare the spooled data in the spooling directory and immediately start despooling when the tape was inserted by the operator. 2nd step: Use 2 or more spooling directories. When one directory is currently despooling, the next (on different disk drives) could already be spooling the next data. Notes: I am using bacula 2.2.8, which has none of those features implemented. Item 11: Include all conf files in specified directory Date: 18 October 2008 Origin: Database, Lda. Maputo, Mozambique Contact:Cameron Smith / cameron.ord@database.co.mz Status: New request What: A directive something like "IncludeConf = /etc/bacula/subconfs" Every time Bacula Director restarts or reloads, it will walk the given directory (non-recursively) and include the contents of any files therein, as though they were appended to bacula-dir.conf Why: Permits simplified and safer configuration for larger installations with many client PCs. Currently, through judicious use of JobDefs and similar directives, it is possible to reduce the client-specific part of a configuration to a minimum. The client-specific directives can be prepared according to a standard template and dropped into a known directory. However it is still necessary to add a line to the "master" (bacula-dir.conf) referencing each new file. This exposes the master to unnecessary risk of accidental mistakes and makes automation of adding new client-confs, more difficult (it is easier to automate dropping a file into a dir, than rewriting an existing file). Ken has previously made a convincing argument for NOT including Bacula's core configuration in an RDBMS, but I believe that the present request is a reasonable extension to the current "flat-file-based" configuration philosophy. Notes: There is NO need for any special syntax to these files. They should contain standard directives which are simply "inlined" to the parent file as already happens when you explicitly reference an external file. Notes: (kes) this can already be done with scripting From: John Jorgensen The bacula-dir.conf at our site contains these lines: # # Include subfiles associated with configuration of clients. # They define the bulk of the Clients, Jobs, and FileSets. # @|"sh -c 'for f in /etc/bacula/clientdefs/*.conf ; do echo @${f} ; done'" and when we get a new client, we just put its configuration into a new file called something like: /etc/bacula/clientdefs/clientname.conf Item 12: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job Date: 27 November 2005 Origin: Ove Risberg (Ove.Risberg at octocode dot com) Status: What: I want the file daemon to start multiple threads for a backup job so the fastest possible backup can be made. The file daemon could parse the FileSet information and start one thread for each File entry located on a separate filesystem. A confiuration option in the job section should be used to enable or disable this feature. The confgutration option could specify the maximum number of threads in the file daemon. If the theads could spool the data to separate spool files the restore process will not be much slower. Why: Multiple concurrent backups of a large fileserver with many disks and controllers will be much faster. Notes: (KES) This is not necessary and could be accomplished by having two jobs. In addition, the current VSS code is single thread. Item 13: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month Origin: Carsten Menke Date: 02 March 2008 Status: What: Currently if you want to run your monthly Backups on the last Friday of each month this is only possible with workarounds (e.g scripting) (As some months got 4 Fridays and some got 5 Fridays) The same is true if you plan to run your yearly Backups on the last Friday of the year. It would be nice to have the ability to use the builtin scheduler for this. Why: In many companies the last working day of the week is Friday (or Saturday), so to get the most data of the month onto the monthly tape, the employees are advised to insert the tape for the monthly backups on the last friday of the month. Notes: To give this a complete functionality it would be nice if the "first" and "last" Keywords could be implemented in the scheduler, so it is also possible to run monthy backups at the first friday of the month and many things more. So if the syntax would expand to this {first|last} {Month|Week|Day|Mo-Fri} of the {Year|Month|Week} you would be able to run really flexible jobs. To got a certain Job run on the last Friday of the Month for example one could then write Run = pool=Monthly last Fri of the Month at 23:50 ## Yearly Backup Run = pool=Yearly last Fri of the Year at 23:50 ## Certain Jobs the last Week of a Month Run = pool=LastWeek last Week of the Month at 23:50 ## Monthly Backup on the last day of the month Run = pool=Monthly last Day of the Month at 23:50 Item 14: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output Origin: Mark Bergman Date: Tue Aug 22 17:13:39 EDT 2006 Status: What: The "stat clients" command doesn't include any detail on when the active backup jobs were launched. Why: Including the timestamp would make it much easier to decide whether a job is running properly. Notes: It may be helpful to have the output from "stat clients" formatted more like that from "stat dir" (and other commands), in a column format. The per-client information that's currently shown (level, client name, JobId, Volume, pool, device, Files, etc.) is good, but somewhat hard to parse (both programmatically and visually), particularly when there are many active clients. Item 15: Message mailing based on backup types Origin: Evan Kaufman Date: January 6, 2006 Status: What: In the "Messages" resource definitions, allowing messages to be mailed based on the type (backup, restore, etc.) and level (full, differential, etc) of job that created the originating message(s). Why: It would, for example, allow someone's boss to be emailed automatically only when a Full Backup job runs, so he can retrieve the tapes for offsite storage, even if the IT dept. doesn't (or can't) explicitly notify him. At the same time, his mailbox wouldnt be filled by notifications of Verifies, Restores, or Incremental/Differential Backups (which would likely be kept onsite). Notes: One way this could be done is through additional message types, for example: Messages { # email the boss only on full system backups Mail = boss@mycompany.com = full, !incremental, !differential, !restore, !verify, !admin # email us only when something breaks MailOnError = itdept@mycompany.com = all } Notes: Kern: This should be rather trivial to implement. Item 16: Ability to import/export Bacula database entities Date: 26 April 2009 Origin: Eric Status: What: Create a Bacula ASCII SQL database independent format that permits importing and exporting database catalog Job entities. Why: For achival, database clustering, tranfer to other databases of any SQL engine. Notes: Job selection should be by Job, time, Volume, Client, Pool and possibly other criteria. Item 17: Implementation of running Job speed limit. Origin: Alex F, alexxzell at yahoo dot com Date: 29 January 2009 What: I noticed the need for an integrated bandwidth limiter for running jobs. It would be very useful just to specify another field in bacula-dir.conf, like speed = how much speed you wish for that specific job to run at Why: Because of a couple of reasons. First, it's very hard to implement a traffic shaping utility and also make it reliable. Second, it is very uncomfortable to have to implement these apps to, let's say 50 clients (including desktops, servers). This would also be unreliable because you have to make sure that the apps are properly working when needed; users could also disable them (accidentally or not). It would be very useful to provide Bacula this ability. All information would be centralized, you would not have to go to 50 different clients in 10 different locations for configuration; eliminating 3rd party additions help in establishing efficiency. Would also avoid bandwidth congestion, especially where there is little available. Item 18: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types Date: 19 Jan 2005 Origin: Chad Slater Status: What: Adding a FullStorage=BigTapeLibrary in the Schedule resource would help those of us who use different storage devices for different backup levels cope with the "auto-upgrade" of a backup. Why: Assume I add several new devices to be backed up, i.e. several hosts with 1TB RAID. To avoid tape switching hassles, incrementals are stored in a disk set on a 2TB RAID. If you add these devices in the middle of the month, the incrementals are upgraded to "full" backups, but they try to use the same storage device as requested in the incremental job, filling up the RAID holding the differentials. If we could override the Storage parameter for full and/or differential backups, then the Full job would use the proper Storage device, which has more capacity (i.e. a 8TB tape library. Item 19: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size Date: 19 January 2006 Origin: Adam Thornton Status: What: Other backup programs have a feature whereby it estimates the space that a differential, incremental, and full backup would take. If the difference in space required between the scheduled level and the next level up is beneath some user-defined critical threshold, the backup level is bumped to the next type. Doing this minimizes the number of volumes necessary during a restore, with a fairly minimal cost in backup media space. Why: I know at least one (quite sophisticated and smart) user for whom the absence of this feature is a deal-breaker in terms of using Bacula; if we had it it would eliminate the one cool thing other backup programs can do and we can't (at least, the one cool thing I know of). Item 20: Allow FileSet inclusion/exclusion by creation/mod times Origin: Evan Kaufman Date: January 11, 2006 Status: What: In the vein of the Wild and Regex directives in a Fileset's Options, it would be helpful to allow a user to include or exclude files and directories by creation or modification times. You could factor the Exclude=yes|no option in much the same way it affects the Wild and Regex directives. For example, you could exclude all files modified before a certain date: Options { Exclude = yes Modified Before = #### } Or you could exclude all files created/modified since a certain date: Options { Exclude = yes Created Modified Since = #### } The format of the time/date could be done several ways, say the number of seconds since the epoch: 1137008553 = Jan 11 2006, 1:42:33PM # result of `date +%s` Or a human readable date in a cryptic form: 20060111134233 = Jan 11 2006, 1:42:33PM # YYYYMMDDhhmmss Why: I imagine a feature like this could have many uses. It would allow a user to do a full backup while excluding the base operating system files, so if I installed a Linux snapshot from a CD yesterday, I'll *exclude* all files modified *before* today. If I need to recover the system, I use the CD I already have, plus the tape backup. Or if, say, a Windows client is hit by a particularly corrosive virus, and I need to *exclude* any files created/modified *since* the time of infection. Notes: Of course, this feature would work in concert with other in/exclude rules, and wouldnt override them (or each other). Notes: The directives I'd imagine would be along the lines of "[Created] [Modified] [Before|Since] = ". So one could compare against 'ctime' and/or 'mtime', but ONLY 'before' or 'since'. Item 21: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape Date: Nov. 24/2005 Origin: Ray Pengelly [ray at biomed dot queensu dot ca Status: What: The ability to archive data to storage based on certain parameters such as age, size, or location. Once the data has been written to storage and logged it is then pruned from the originating filesystem. Note! We are talking about user's files and not Bacula Volumes. Why: This would allow fully automatic storage management which becomes useful for large datastores. It would also allow for auto-staging from one media type to another. Example 1) Medical imaging needs to store large amounts of data. They decide to keep data on their servers for 6 months and then put it away for long term storage. The server then finds all files older than 6 months writes them to tape. The files are then removed from the server. Example 2) All data that hasn't been accessed in 2 months could be moved from high-cost, fibre-channel disk storage to a low-cost large-capacity SATA disk storage pool which doesn't have as quick of access time. Then after another 6 months (or possibly as one storage pool gets full) data is migrated to Tape. Item 22: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters Origin: Dmitriy Pinchukov Date: 16 August 2006 Status: Patch made by Nigel Stepp What: When I do update -> Volume parameters -> All Volumes from Pool, then I have to select pools one by one. I'd like console to have an option like "0: All Pools" in the list of defined pools. Why: I have many pools and therefore unhappy with manually updating each of them using update -> Volume parameters -> All Volumes from Pool -> pool #. Item 23: Automatic disabling of devices Date: 2005-11-11 Origin: Peter Eriksson Status: What: After a configurable amount of fatal errors with a tape drive Bacula should automatically disable further use of a certain tape drive. There should also be "disable"/"enable" commands in the "bconsole" tool. Why: On a multi-drive jukebox there is a possibility of tape drives going bad during large backups (needing a cleaning tape run, tapes getting stuck). It would be advantageous if Bacula would automatically disable further use of a problematic tape drive after a configurable amount of errors has occurred. An example: I have a multi-drive jukebox (6 drives, 380+ slots) where tapes occasionally get stuck inside the drive. Bacula will notice that the "mtx-changer" command will fail and then fail any backup jobs trying to use that drive. However, it will still keep on trying to run new jobs using that drive and fail - forever, and thus failing lots and lots of jobs... Since we have many drives Bacula could have just automatically disabled further use of that drive and used one of the other ones instead. Item 24: Ability to defer Batch Insert to a later time Date: 26 April 2009 Origin: Eric Status: What: Instead of doing a Job Batch Insert at the end of the Job which might create resource contention with lots of Job, defer the insert to a later time. Why: Permits to focus on getting the data on the Volume and putting the metadata into the Catalog outside the backup window. Notes: Will use the proposed Bacula ASCII database import/export format (i.e. dependent on the import/export entities project). Item 25: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes to Storage resource Origin: Bastian Friedrich Date: 2008-07-09 Status: - What: SD has a "Maximum Volume Size" statement, which is deprecated and superseded by the Pool resource statement "Maximum Volume Bytes". It would be good if either statement could be used in Storage resources. Why: Pools do not have to be restricted to a single storage type/device; thus, it may be impossible to define Maximum Volume Bytes in the Pool resource. The old MaxVolSize statement is deprecated, as it is SD side only. I am using the same pool for different devices. Notes: State of idea currently unknown. Storage resources in the dir config currently translate to very slim catalog entries; these entries would require extensions to implement what is described here. Quite possibly, numerous other statements that are currently available in Pool resources could be used in Storage resources too quite well. Item 26: Enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries Date: 24 Jan, 2007 Origin: Mark Bergman Status: What: Change the parsing of the query.sql file and the query command so that queries are named/numbered by a fixed value, not their order in the file. Why: One of the real strengths of bacula is the ability to query the database, and the fact that complex queries can be saved and referenced from a file is very powerful. However, the choice of query (both for interactive use, and by scripting input to the bconsole command) is completely dependent on the order within the query.sql file. The descriptve labels are helpful for interactive use, but users become used to calling a particular query "by number", or may use scripts to execute queries. This presents a problem if the number or order of queries in the file changes. If the query.sql file used the numeric tags as a real value (rather than a comment), then users could have a higher confidence that they are executing the intended query, that their local changes wouldn't conflict with future bacula upgrades. For scripting, it's very important that the intended query is what's actually executed. The current method of parsing the query.sql file discourages scripting because the addition or deletion of queries within the file will require corresponding changes to scripts. It may not be obvious to users that deleting query "17" in the query.sql file will require changing all references to higher numbered queries. Similarly, when new bacula distributions change the number of "official" queries, user-developed queries cannot simply be appended to the file without also changing any references to those queries in scripts or procedural documentation, etc. In addition, using fixed numbers for queries would encourage more user-initiated development of queries, by supporting conventions such as: queries numbered 1-50 are supported/developed/distributed by with official bacula releases queries numbered 100-200 are community contributed, and are related to media management queries numbered 201-300 are community contributed, and are related to checksums, finding duplicated files across different backups, etc. queries numbered 301-400 are community contributed, and are related to backup statistics (average file size, size per client per backup level, time for all clients by backup level, storage capacity by media type, etc.) queries numbered 500-999 are locally created Notes: Alternatively, queries could be called by keyword (tag), rather than by number. Item 27: Bacula Dir, FD and SD to support proxies Origin: Karl Grindley @ MIT Lincoln Laboratory Date: 25 March 2009 Status: proposed What: Support alternate methods for nailing up a TCP session such as SOCKS5, SOCKS4 and HTTP (CONNECT) proxies. Such a feature would allow tunneling of bacula traffic in and out of proxied networks. Why: Currently, bacula is architected to only function on a flat network, with no barriers or limitations. Due to the large configuration states of any network and the infinite configuration where file daemons and storage daemons may sit in relation to one another, bacula often is not usable on a network where filtered or air-gaped networks exist. While often solutions such as ACL modifications to firewalls or port redirection via SNAT or DNAT will solve the issue, often however, these solutions are not adequate or not allowed by hard policy. In an air-gapped network with only a highly locked down proxy services are provided (SOCKS4/5 and/or HTTP and/or SSH outbound) ACLs or iptable rules will not work. Notes: Director resource tunneling: This configuration option to utilize a proxy to connect to a client should be specified in the client resource Client resource tunneling: should be configured in the client resource in the director config file? Or configured on the bacula-fd configuration file on the fd host itself? If the ladder, this would allow only certain clients to use a proxy, where others do not when establishing the TCP connection to the storage server. Also worth noting, there are other 3rd party, light weight apps that could be utilized to bootstrap this. Instead of sockifing bacula itself, use an external program to broker proxy authentication, and connection to the remote host. OpenSSH does this by using the "ProxyCommand" syntax in the client configuration and uses stdin and stdout to the command. Connect.c is a very popular one. (http://bent.latency.net/bent/darcs/goto-san-connect-1.85/src/connect.html). One could also possibly use stunnel, netcat, etc. Item 28: Add Minumum Spool Size directive Date: 20 March 2008 Origin: Frank Sweetser What: Add a new SD directive, "minimum spool size" (or similar). This directive would specify a minimum level of free space available for spooling. If the unused spool space is less than this level, any new spooling requests would be blocked as if the "maximum spool size" threshold had bee reached. Already spooling jobs would be unaffected by this directive. Why: I've been bitten by this scenario a couple of times: Assume a maximum spool size of 100M. Two concurrent jobs, A and B, are both running. Due to timing quirks and previously running jobs, job A has used 99.9M of space in the spool directory. While A is busy despooling to disk, B is happily using the remaining 0.1M of spool space. This ends up in a spool/despool sequence every 0.1M of data. In addition to fragmenting the data on the volume far more than was necessary, in larger data sets (ie, tens or hundreds of gigabytes) it can easily produce multi-megabyte report emails! Item 29: Handle Windows Encrypted Files using Win raw encryption Origin: Michael Mohr, SAG Mohr.External@infineon.com Date: 22 February 2008 Origin: Alex Ehrlich (Alex.Ehrlich-at-mail.ee) Date: 05 August 2008 Status: What: Make it possible to backup and restore Encypted Files from and to Windows systems without the need to decrypt it by using the raw encryption functions API (see: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363783.aspx) that is provided for that reason by Microsoft. If a file ist encrypted could be examined by evaluating the FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ENCRYTED flag of the GetFileAttributes function. For each file backed up or restored by FD on Windows, check if the file is encrypted; if so then use OpenEncryptedFileRaw, ReadEncryptedFileRaw, WriteEncryptedFileRaw, CloseEncryptedFileRaw instead of BackupRead and BackupWrite API calls. Why: Without the usage of this interface the fd-daemon running under the system account can't read encypted Files because the key needed for the decrytion is missed by them. As a result actually encrypted files are not backed up by bacula and also no error is shown while missing these files. Notes: Using xxxEncryptedFileRaw API would allow to backup and restore EFS-encrypted files without decrypting their data. Note that such files cannot be restored "portably" (at least, easily) but they would be restoreable to a different (or reinstalled) Win32 machine; the restore would require setup of a EFS recovery agent in advance, of course, and this shall be clearly reflected in the documentation, but this is the normal Windows SysAdmin's business. When "portable" backup is requested the EFS-encrypted files shall be clearly reported as errors. See MSDN on the "Backup and Restore of Encrypted Files" topic: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363783.aspx Maybe the EFS support requires a new flag in the database for each file, too? Unfortunately, the implementation is not as straightforward as 1-to-1 replacement of BackupRead with ReadEncryptedFileRaw, requiring some FD code rewrite to work with encrypted-file-related callback functions. Item 30: Implement a Storage device like Amazon's S3. Date: 25 August 2008 Origin: Soren Hansen Status: Not started. What: Enable the storage daemon to store backup data on Amazon's S3 service. Why: Amazon's S3 is a cheap way to store data off-site. Notes: If we configure the Pool to put only one job per volume (they don't support append operation), and the volume size isn't to big (100MB?), it should be easy to adapt the disk-changer script to add get/put procedure with curl. So, the data would be safetly copied during the Job. Cloud should be only used with Copy jobs, users should always have a copy of their data on their site. We should also think to have our own cache, trying always to have cloud volume on the local disk. (I don't know if users want to store 100GB on cloud, so it shouldn't be a disk size problem). For example, if bacula want to recycle a volume, it will start by downloading the file to truncate it few seconds later, if we can avoid that... Item 31: Convert tray monitor on Windows to a stand alone program Date: 26 April 2009 Origin: Kern/Eric Status: What: Separate Win32 tray monitor to be a separate program. Why: Vista does not allow SYSTEM services to interact with the desktop, so the current tray monitor does not work on Vista machines. Notes: Requires communicating with the FD via the network (simulate a console connection). Item 32: Relabel disk volume after recycling Origin: Pasi Kärkkäinen Date: 07 May 2009. Status: Not implemented yet, no code written. What: The ability to relabel the disk volume (and thus rename the file on the disk) after it has been recycled. Useful when you have a single job per disk volume, and you use a custom Label format, for example: Label Format = "${Client}-${Level}-${NumVols:p/4/0/r}-${Year}_${Month}_${Day}-${Hour}_${Minute}" Why: Disk volumes in Bacula get the label/filename when they are used for the first time. If you use recycling and custom label format like above, the disk volume name doesn't match the contents after it has been recycled. This feature makes it possible to keep the label/filename in sync with the content and thus makes it easy to check/monitor the backups from the shell and/or normal file management tools, because the filenames of the disk volumes match the content. Notes: The configuration option could be "Relabel after Recycling = Yes". Item 33: Command that releases all drives in an autochanger Origin: Blake Dunlap (blake@nxs.net) Date: 10/07/2009 Status: Request What: It would be nice if there was a release command that would release all drives in an autochanger instead of having to do each one in turn. Why: It can take some time for a release to occur, and the commands must be given for each drive in turn, which can quicky scale if there are several drives in the library. (Having to watch the console, to give each command can waste a good bit of time when you start getting into the 16 drive range when the tapes can take up to 3 minutes to eject each) Notes: Due to the way some autochangers/libraries work, you cannot assume that new tapes inserted will go into slots that are not currently believed to be in use by bacula (the tape from that slot is in a drive). This would make any changes in configuration quicker/easier, as all drives need to be released before any modifications to slots. Item 34: Run bscan on a remote storage daemon from within bconsole. Date: 07 October 2009 Origin: Graham Keeling Status: Proposing What: The ability to be able to run bscan on a remote storage daemon from within bconsole in order to populate your catalog. Why: Currently, it seems you have to: a) log in to a console on the remote machine b) figure out where the storage daemon config file is c) figure out the storage device from the config file d) figure out the catalog IP address e) figure out the catalog port f) open the port on the catalog firewall g) configure the catalog database to accept connections from the remote host h) build a 'bscan' command from (b)-(e) above and run it It would be much nicer to be able to type something like this into bconsole: *bscan storage= device= volume= or something like: *bscan storage= all It seems to me that the scan could also do a better job than the external bscan program currently does. It would possibly be able to deduce some extra details, such as the catalog StorageId for the volumes. Notes: (Kern). If you need to do a bscan, you have done something wrong, so this functionality should not need to be integrated into the the Storage daemon. However, I am not opposed to someone implementing this feature providing that all the code is in a shared object (or dll) and does not add significantly to the size of the Storage daemon. In addition, the code should be written in a way such that the same source code is used in both the bscan program and the Storage daemon to avoid adding a lot of new code that must be maintained by the project. Item 35: Implement a Migration job type that will create a reverse incremental (or decremental) backup from two existing full backups. Date: 05 October 2009 Origin: Griffith College Dublin. Some sponsorship available. Contact: Gavin McCullagh Status: What: The ability to take two full backup jobs and derive a reverse incremental backup from them. The older full backup data may then be discarded. Why: Long-term backups based on keeping full backups can be expensive in media. In many cases (eg a NAS), as the client accumulates files over months and years, the same file will be duplicated unchanged, across many media and datasets. Eg, Less than 10% (and shrinking) of our monthly full mail server backup is new files, the other 90% is also in the previous full backup. Regularly converting the oldest full backup into a reverse incremental backup allows the admin to keep access to old backup jobs, but remove all of the duplicated files, freeing up media. Notes: This feature was previously discussed on the bacula-devel list here: http://www.mail-archive.com/bacula-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg04962.html Item 36: Job migration between different SDs Origin: Mariusz Czulada Date: 07 May 2007 Status: NEW What: Allow to specify in migration job devices on Storage Daemon other then the one used for migrated jobs (possibly on different/distant host) Why: Sometimes we have more then one system which requires backup implementation. Often, these systems are functionally unrelated and placed in different locations. Having a big backup device (a tape library) in each location is not cost-effective. It would be much better to have one powerful enough tape library which could handle backups from all systems, assuming relatively fast and reliable WAN connections. In such architecture backups are done in service windows on local bacula servers, then migrated to central storage off the peak hours. Notes: If migration to different SD is working, migration to the same SD, as now, could be done the same way (i mean 'localhost') to unify the whole process Item 37: Concurrent spooling and despooling withini a single job. Date: 17 nov 2009 Origin: Jesper Krogh Status: NEW What: When a job has spooling enabled and the spool area size is less than the total volumes size the storage daemon will: 1) Spool to spool-area 2) Despool to tape 3) Go to 1 if more data to be backed up. Typical disks will serve data with a speed of 100MB/s when dealing with large files, network it typical capable of doing 115MB/s (GbitE). Tape drives will despool with 50-90MB/s (LTO3) 70-120MB/s (LTO4) depending on compression and data. As bacula currently works it'll hold back data from the client until de-spooling is done, now matter if the spool area can handle another block of data. Say given a FileSet of 4TB and a spool-area of 100GB and a Maximum Job Spool Size set to 50GB then above sequence could be changed to allow to spool to the other 50GB while despooling the first 50GB and not holding back the client while doing it. As above numbers show, depending on tape-drive and disk-arrays this potentially leads to a cut of the backup-time of 50% for the individual jobs. Real-world example, backing up 112.6GB (large files) to LTO4 tapes (despools with ~75MB/s, data is gzipped on the remote filesystem. Maximum Job Spool Size = 8GB Current: Size: 112.6GB Elapsed time (total time): 46m 15s => 2775s Despooling time: 25m 41s => 1541s (55%) Spooling time: 20m 34s => 1234s (45%) Reported speed: 40.58MB/s Spooling speed: 112.6GB/1234s => 91.25MB/s Despooling speed: 112.6GB/1541s => 73.07MB/s So disk + net can "keep up" with the LTO4 drive (in this test) Prosed change would effectively make the backup run in the "despooling time" 1541s giving a reduction to 55% of the total run time. In the situation where the individual job cannot keep up with LTO-drive spooling enables efficient multiplexing of multiple concurrent jobs onto the same drive. Why: When dealing with larger volumes the general utillization of the network/disk is important to maximize in order to be able to run a full backup over a weekend. Current work-around is to split the FileSet in smaller FileSet and Jobs but that leads to more configuration mangement and is harder to review for completeness. Subsequently it makes restores more complex. Item 39: Extend the verify code to make it possible to verify older jobs, not only the last one that has finished Date: 10 April 2009 Origin: Ralf Gross (Ralf-Lists ralfgross.de) Status: not implemented or documented What: At the moment a VolumeToCatalog job compares only the last job with the data in the catalog. It's not possible to compare the data (md5sums) of an older volume with the data in the catalog. Why: If a verify job fails, one has to immediately check the source of the problem, fix it and rerun the verify job. This has to happen before the next backup of the verified backup job starts. More important: It's not possible to check jobs that are kept for a long time (archiv). If a jobid could be specified for a verify job, older backups/tapes could be checked on a regular base. Notes: verify documentation: VolumeToCatalog: This level causes Bacula to read the file attribute data written to the Volume from the last Job [...] Verify Job = If you run a verify job without this directive, the last job run will be compared with the catalog, which means that you must immediately follow a backup by a verify command. If you specify a Verify Job Bacula will find the last job with that name that ran [...] example bconsole verify dialog: Run Verify job JobName: VerifyServerXXX Level: VolumeToCatalog Client: ServerXXX-fd FileSet: ServerXXX-Vol1 Pool: Full (From Job resource) Storage: Neo4100 (From Pool resource) Verify Job: ServerXXX-Vol1 Verify List: When: 2009-04-20 09:03:04 Priority: 10 OK to run? (yes/mod/no): m Parameters to modify: 1: Level 2: Storage 3: Job 4: FileSet 5: Client 6: When 7: Priority 8: Pool 9: Verify Job Item 40: Separate "Storage" and "Device" in the bacula-dir.conf Date: 29 April 2009 Origin: "James Harper" Status: not implemented or documented What: Separate "Storage" and "Device" in the bacula-dir.conf The resulting config would looks something like: Storage { Name = name_of_server Address = hostname/IP address SDPort = 9103 Password = shh_its_a_secret Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 7 } Device { Name = name_of_device Storage = name_of_server Device = name_of_device_on_sd Media Type = media_type Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1 } Maximum Concurrent Jobs would be specified with a server and a device maximum, which would both be honoured by the director. Almost everything that mentions a 'Storage' would need to be changed to 'Device', although perhaps a 'Storage' would just be a synonym for 'Device' for backwards compatibility... Why: If you have multiple Storage definitions pointing to different Devices in the same Storage daemon, the "status storage" command prompts for each different device, but they all give the same information. Notes: Item 41: Least recently used device selection for tape drives in autochanger. Date: 12 October 2009 Origin: Thomas Carter Status: Proposal What: A better tape drive selection algorithm for multi-drive autochangers. The AUTOCHANGER class contains an array list of tape devices. When a tape drive is needed, this list is always searched in order. This causes lower number drives (specifically drive 0) to do a majority of the work with higher numbered drives possibly never being used. When a drive in an autochanger is reserved for use, its entry should be moved to the end of the list; this would give a rough LRU drive selection. Why: The current implementation places a majority of use and wear on drive 0 of a multi-drive autochanger. Notes: ========= New items after last vote ==================== ========= Add new items above this line ================= ============= Empty Feature Request form =========== Item n: One line summary ... Date: Date submitted Origin: Name and email of originator. Status: What: More detailed explanation ... Why: Why it is important ... Notes: Additional notes or features (omit if not used) ============== End Feature Request form ============== ========== Items put on hold by Kern ============================ ========== Items completed in version 5.0.0 ==================== *Item 2: 'restore' menu: enter a JobId, automatically select dependents *Item 5: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned (partial -- truncate when pruned) *Item 6: Implement Base jobs *Item 10: Restore from volumes on multiple storage daemons *Item 15: Enable/disable compression depending on storage device (disk/tape) *Item 20: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications *Item 23: "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" for drives when used with changer device *Item 31: List InChanger flag when doing restore. *Item 35: Port bat to Win32