Projects:
Bacula Projects Roadmap
- Status updated 7 July 2007
- After re-ordering in vote priority
-
-Items Completed:
-Item: 2 Implement a Bacula GUI/management tool.
-Item: 18 Quick release of FD-SD connection after backup.
-Item: 23 Implement from-client and to-client on restore command line.
-Item: 25 Implement huge exclude list support using dlist
-Item: 41 Enable to relocate files and directories when restoring
-Item: 42 Batch attribute inserts (ten times faster)
-Item: 43 More concurrency in SD using micro-locking
-Item: 44 Performance enhancements (POSIX/Win32 OS file access hints).
-Item: 40 Include JobID in spool file name
+ Status updated 8 August 2010
Summary:
-Item: 1 Accurate restoration of renamed/deleted files
-Item: 2* Implement a Bacula GUI/management tool.
-Item: 3 Allow FD to initiate a backup
-Item: 4 Merge multiple backups (Synthetic Backup or Consolidation).
-Item: 5 Deletion of Disk-Based Bacula Volumes
-Item: 6 Implement Base jobs.
-Item: 7 Implement creation and maintenance of copy pools
-Item: 8 Directive/mode to backup only file changes, not entire file
-Item: 9 Implement a server-side compression feature
-Item: 10 Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management.
-Item: 11 Allow skipping execution of Jobs
-Item: 12 Add a scheduling syntax that permits weekly rotations
-Item: 13 Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
-Item: 14 Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
-Item: 15 Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
-Item: 16 Add Plug-ins to the FileSet Include statements.
-Item: 17 Restore only file attributes (permissions, ACL, owner, group...)
-Item: 18* Quick release of FD-SD connection after backup.
-Item: 19 Implement a Python interface to the Bacula catalog.
-Item: 20 Archive data
-Item: 21 Split documentation
-Item: 22 Implement support for stacking arbitrary stream filters, sinks.
-Item: 23* Implement from-client and to-client on restore command line.
-Item: 24 Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types.
-Item: 25* Implement huge exclude list support using hashing.
-Item: 26 Implement more Python events in Bacula.
-Item: 27 Incorporation of XACML2/SAML2 parsing
-Item: 28 Filesystem watch triggered backup.
-Item: 29 Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
-Item: 30 Tray monitor window cleanups
-Item: 31 Implement multiple numeric backup levels as supported by dump
-Item: 32 Automatic promotion of backup levels
-Item: 33 Clustered file-daemons
-Item: 34 Commercial database support
-Item: 35 Automatic disabling of devices
-Item: 36 An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
-Item: 37 Add an item to the restore option where you can select a pool
-Item: 38 Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
-Item: 39 Message mailing based on backup types
-Item: 40* Include JobID in spool file name
-Item: 41* Enable to relocate files and directories when restoring
-Item: 42* Batch attribute inserts (ten times faster)
-Item: 43* More concurrency in SD using micro-locking
-Item: 44* Performance enhancements (POSIX/Win32 OS file access hints).
-
-Item 1: Accurate restoration of renamed/deleted files
- Date: 28 November 2005
- Origin: Martin Simmons (martin at lispworks dot com)
- Status: Robert Nelson will implement this
-
- What: When restoring a fileset for a specified date (including "most
- recent"), Bacula should give you exactly the files and directories
- that existed at the time of the last backup prior to that date.
-
- Currently this only works if the last backup was a Full backup.
- When the last backup was Incremental/Differential, files and
- directories that have been renamed or deleted since the last Full
- backup are not currently restored correctly. Ditto for files with
- extra/fewer hard links than at the time of the last Full backup.
-
- Why: Incremental/Differential would be much more useful if this worked.
-
- Notes: Merging of multiple backups into a single one seems to
- rely on this working, otherwise the merged backups will not be
- truly equivalent to a Full backup.
-
- Kern: notes shortened. This can be done without the need for
- inodes. It is essentially the same as the current Verify job,
- but one additional database record must be written, which does
- not need any database change.
-
- Kern: see if we can correct restoration of directories if
- replace=ifnewer is set. Currently, if the directory does not
- exist, a "dummy" directory is created, then when all the files
- are updated, the dummy directory is newer so the real values
- are not updated.
-
-Item 2: Implement a Bacula GUI/management tool.
- Origin: Kern
- Date: 28 October 2005
- Status: In progress
-
- What: Implement a Bacula console, and management tools
- probably using Qt3 and C++.
-
- Why: Don't we already have a wxWidgets GUI? Yes, but
- it is written in C++ and changes to the user interface
- must be hand tailored using C++ code. By developing
- the user interface using Qt designer, the interface
- can be very easily updated and most of the new Python
- code will be automatically created. The user interface
- changes become very simple, and only the new features
- must be implement. In addition, the code will be in
- Python, which will give many more users easy (or easier)
- access to making additions or modifications.
-
- Notes: There is a partial Python-GTK implementation
- Lucas Di Pentima <lucas at lunix dot com dot ar> but
- it is no longer being developed.
-
-Item 3: 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.
-
-
-Item 4: Merge multiple backups (Synthetic Backup or Consolidation).
- Origin: Marc Cousin and Eric Bollengier
- Date: 15 November 2005
- Status: Waiting implementation. Depends on first implementing
- project Item 2 (Migration) which is now done.
-
- What: A merged backup is a backup made without connecting to the Client.
- It would be a Merge of existing backups into a single backup.
- In effect, it is like a restore but to the backup medium.
-
- For instance, say that last Sunday we made a full backup. Then
- all week long, we created incremental backups, in order to do
- them fast. Now comes Sunday again, and we need another full.
- The merged backup makes it possible to do instead an incremental
- backup (during the night for instance), and then create a merged
- backup during the day, by using the full and incrementals from
- the week. The merged backup will be exactly like a full made
- Sunday night on the tape, but the production interruption on the
- Client will be minimal, as the Client will only have to send
- incrementals.
-
- In fact, if it's done correctly, you could merge all the
- Incrementals into single Incremental, or all the Incrementals
- and the last Differential into a new Differential, or the Full,
- last differential and all the Incrementals into a new Full
- backup. And there is no need to involve the Client.
-
- Why: The benefit is that :
- - the Client just does an incremental ;
- - the merged backup on tape is just as a single full backup,
- and can be restored very fast.
-
- This is also a way of reducing the backup data since the old
- data can then be pruned (or not) from the catalog, possibly
- allowing older volumes to be recycled
-
-Item 5: Deletion of Disk-Based Bacula Volumes
- Date: Nov 25, 2005
- Origin: Ross Boylan <RossBoylan at stanfordalumni dot org> (edited
- by Kern)
- Status:
-
- What: Provide a way for Bacula to automatically remove Volumes
- from the filesystem, or optionally to truncate them.
- Obviously, the Volume must be pruned prior removal.
-
- Why: This would allow users more control over their Volumes and
- prevent disk based volumes from consuming too much space.
-
- Notes: The following two directives might do the trick:
-
- Volume Data Retention = <time period>
- Remove Volume After = <time period>
-
- The migration project should also remove a Volume that is
- migrated. This might also work for tape Volumes.
-
-Item 6: Implement Base jobs.
- Date: 28 October 2005
- Origin: Kern
- Status:
+* => item complete
+
+Item 1: Ability to restart failed jobs
+Item 2: SD redesign
+Item* 3: NDMP backup/restore
+Item 4: SAP backup/restore
+Item 5: Oracle backup/restore
+Item 6: Zimbra and Zarafa backup/restore
+Item* 7: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
+Item 8: Include all conf files in specified directory
+Item 9: Reduction of communications bandwidth for a backup
+Item 10: Concurrent spooling and despooling within a single job.
+Item 11: Start spooling even when waiting on tape
+Item*12: Add ability to Verify any specified Job.
+Item 13: Data encryption on storage daemon
+Item 14: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month
+Item 15: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
+Item 16: Ability to defer Batch Insert to a later time
+Item 17: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes to Storage resource
+Item 18: Message mailing based on backup types
+Item 19: Handle Windows Encrypted Files using Win raw encryption
+Item 20: Job migration between different SDs
+Item 19. Allow FD to initiate a backup
+Item 21: Implement Storage daemon compression
+Item 22: Ability to import/export Bacula database entities
+Item*23: Implementation of running Job speed limit.
+Item 24: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
+Item 25: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
+Item 26: Allow FileSet inclusion/exclusion by creation/mod times
+Item 27: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
+Item 28: Ability to reconnect a disconnected comm line
+Item 29: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
+Item 30: Automatic disabling of devices
+Item 31: Enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries
+Item 32: Bacula Dir, FD and SD to support proxies
+Item 33: Add Minumum Spool Size directive
+Item 34: Command that releases all drives in an autochanger
+Item 35: Run bscan on a remote storage daemon from within bconsole.
+Item 36: Implement a Migration job type that will create a reverse
+Item 37: Separate "Storage" and "Device" in the bacula-dir.conf
+Item 38: Least recently used device selection for tape drives in autochanger.
+Item 39: Implement a Storage device like Amazon's S3.
+Item*40: Convert tray monitor on Windows to a stand alone program
+Item 41: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management
+Item 42: Relabel disk volume after recycling
+
+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: SD redesign
+ Date: 8 August 2010
+ Origin: Kern
+ Status:
+
+ What: Various ideas for redesigns planned for the SD:
+ 1. One thread per drive
+ 2. Design a class structure for all objects in the SD.
+ 3. Make Device into C++ classes for each device type
+ 4. Make Device have a proxy (front end intercept class) that will permit control over locking and changing the real device pointer. It can also permit delaying opening, so that we can adapt to having another program that tells us the Archive device name.
+ 5. Allow plugins to create new on the fly devices
+ 6. Separate SD volume manager
+ 7. Volume manager tells Bacula what drive or device to use for a given volume
- 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 perhaps 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 7: Implement creation and maintenance of copy pools
- Date: 27 November 2005
- Origin: David Boyes (dboyes at sinenomine dot net)
- Status:
+ Why: It will simplify the SD, make it more modular, reduce locking
+ conflicts, and allow multiple buffer backups.
- What: I would like Bacula to have the capability to write copies
- of backed-up data on multiple physical volumes selected
- from different pools without transferring the data
- multiple times, and to accept any of the copy volumes
- as valid for restore.
-
- Why: In many cases, businesses are required to keep offsite
- copies of backup volumes, or just wish for simple
- protection against a human operator dropping a storage
- volume and damaging it. The ability to generate multiple
- volumes in the course of a single backup job allows
- customers to simple check out one copy and send it
- offsite, marking it as out of changer or otherwise
- unavailable. Currently, the library and magazine
- management capability in Bacula does not make this process
- simple.
-
- Restores would use the copy of the data on the first
- available volume, in order of copy pool chain definition.
-
- This is also a major scalability issue -- as the number of
- clients increases beyond several thousand, and the volume
- of data increases, transferring the data multiple times to
- produce additional copies of the backups will become
- physically impossible due to transfer speed
- issues. Generating multiple copies at server side will
- become the only practical option.
-
- How: I suspect that this will require adding a multiplexing
- SD that appears to be a SD to a specific FD, but 1-n FDs
- to the specific back end SDs managing the primary and copy
- pools. Storage pools will also need to acquire parameters
- to define the pools to be used for copies.
-
- Notes: I would commit some of my developers' time if we can agree
- on the design and behavior.
-
-Item 8: Directive/mode to backup only file changes, not entire file
- Date: 11 November 2005
- Origin: Joshua Kugler <joshua dot kugler at uaf dot edu>
- Marek Bajon <mbajon at bimsplus dot com dot pl>
- Status:
- What: Currently when a file changes, the entire file will be backed up in
- the next incremental or full backup. To save space on the tapes
- it would be nice to have a mode whereby only the changes to the
- file would be backed up when it is changed.
+Item 3: NDMP backup/restore
+ Date: 8 August 2010
+ Origin: Bacula Systems
+ Status: Enterprise only if implemented by Bacula Systems
- Why: This would save lots of space when backing up large files such as
- logs, mbox files, Outlook PST files and the like.
+ What: Backup/restore via NDMP -- most important NetApp compatibility
- Notes: This would require the usage of disk-based volumes as comparing
- files would not be feasible using a tape drive.
-Item 9: Implement a server-side compression feature
- Date: 18 December 2006
- Origin: Vadim A. Umanski , e-mail umanski@ext.ru
- Status:
- What: The ability to compress backup data on server 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 10: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management.
- Date: 8 November 2005, November 11, 2005
- Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton at sinenomine dot net>,
- Arno Lehmann <al at its-lehmann dot de>
- Status:
+Item 4: SAP backup/restore
+ Date: 8 August 2010
+ Origin: Bacula Systems
+ Status: Enterprise only if implemented by Bacula Systems
+
+ What: Backup/restore SAP databases (MaxDB, Oracle, possibly DB2)
+
+
+
+Item 5: Oracle backup/restore
+ Date: 8 August 2010
+ Origin: Bacula Systems
+ Status: Enterprise only if implemented by Bacula Systems
+
+ What: Backup/restore Oracle databases
+
+
+Item 6: Zimbra and Zarafa backup/restore
+ Date: 8 August 2010
+ Origin: Bacula Systems
+ Status: Enterprise only if implemented by Bacula Systems
+
+ What: Backup/restore for Zimbra and Zarafa
+
+
+
+Item 7: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
+ Origin: Mark Bergman <mark.bergman@uphs.upenn.edu>
+ Date: Tue Aug 22 17:13:39 EDT 2006
+ Status: Done
+
+ 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 8: 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 <jorgnsn@lcd.uregina.ca>
+ 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
- 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 11: Allow skipping execution of Jobs
- Date: 29 November 2005
- Origin: Florian Schnabel <florian.schnabel at docufy dot de>
+
+
+
+Item 9: 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 10: Concurrent spooling and despooling within a single job.
+Date: 17 nov 2009
+Origin: Jesper Krogh <jesper@krogh.cc>
+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 11: Start spooling even when waiting on tape
+ Origin: Tobias Barth <tobias.barth@web-arts.com>
+ Date: 25 April 2008
Status:
- What: An easy option to skip a certain job on a certain date.
- Why: 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.
+ 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 12: Add ability to Verify any specified Job.
+Date: 17 January 2008
+Origin: portrix.net Hamburg, Germany.
+Contact: Christian Sabelmann
+Status: Can use jobid= in run command to select an old job
+
+ 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 13: Data encryption on storage daemon
+ Origin: Tobias Barth <tobias.barth at web-arts.com>
+ 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 12: Add a scheduling syntax that permits weekly rotations
- Date: 15 December 2006
- Origin: Gregory Brauer (greg at wildbrain dot com)
+
+
+Item 14: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month
+Origin: Carsten Menke <bootsy52 at gmx dot net>
+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 15: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
+ Date: 15 December 2006
+ Origin: Gregory Brauer (greg at wildbrain dot com) and
+ Florian Schnabel <florian.schnabel at docufy dot de>
Status:
- What: Currently, Bacula only understands how to deal with weeks of the
+ 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
A solution would be to add a new syntax that defines (at least)
a start timestamp, and repetition period.
- Why: Rotated backups done at weekly intervals are useful, and Bacula
+ 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
}
}
-Item 13: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
- Date: Nov. 24/2005
- Origin: Ray Pengelly [ray at biomed dot queensu dot ca
- Status:
+ Notes: Kern: I have merged the previously separate project of skipping
+ jobs (via Schedule syntax) into this.
- 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.
+Item 16: Ability to defer Batch Insert to a later time
+ Date: 26 April 2009
+ Origin: Eric
+ Status:
- 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.
+ 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.
- 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.
+ Why: Permits to focus on getting the data on the Volume and
+ putting the metadata into the Catalog outside the backup
+ window.
-Item 14: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
- Origin: Bill Moran <wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>
- Date: 18 Dec 2006
- Status:
- What: Cause Bacula daemons (dir, fd, sd) to always use the ip address
- specified in the [DIR|DF|SD]Addr directive as the source IP
- for initiating communication.
- Why: On complex networks, as well as extremely secure networks, it's
- not unusual to have multiple possible routes through the network.
- Often, each of these routes is secured by different policies
- (effectively, firewalls allow or deny different traffic depending
- on the source address)
- Unfortunately, it can sometimes be difficult or impossible to
- represent this in a system routing table, as the result is
- excessive subnetting that quickly exhausts available IP space.
- The best available workaround is to provide multiple IPs to
- a single machine that are all on the same subnet. In order
- for this to work properly, applications must support the ability
- to bind outgoing connections to a specified address, otherwise
- the operating system will always choose the first IP that
- matches the required route.
- Notes: Many other programs support this. For example, the following
- can be configured in BIND:
- query-source address 10.0.0.1;
- transfer-source 10.0.0.2;
- Which means queries from this server will always come from
- 10.0.0.1 and zone transfers will always originate from
- 10.0.0.2.
-
-Item 15: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
- Date: 27 November 2005
- Origin: Ove Risberg (Ove.Risberg at octocode dot com)
- Status:
+ Notes: Will use the proposed Bacula ASCII database import/export
+ format (i.e. dependent on the import/export entities project).
- 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.
+Item 17: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes to Storage resource
+ Origin: Bastian Friedrich <bastian.friedrich@collax.com>
+ Date: 2008-07-09
+ Status: -
- 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.
+ 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.
- If the theads could spool the data to separate spool files
- the restore process will not be much slower.
+ 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.
- Why: Multiple concurrent backups of a large fileserver with many
- disks and controllers will be much faster.
+ 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 16: Add Plug-ins to the FileSet Include statements.
- Date: 28 October 2005
- Origin:
- Status: Partially coded in 1.37 -- much more to do.
-
- 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 17: Restore only file attributes (permissions, ACL, owner, group...)
- Origin: Eric Bollengier
- Date: 30/12/2006
- Status:
- What: The goal of this project is to be able to restore only rights
- and attributes of files without crushing them.
-
- Why: Who have never had to repair a chmod -R 777, or a wild update
- of recursive right under Windows? At this time, you must have
- enough space to restore data, dump attributes (easy with acl,
- more complex with unix/windows rights) and apply them to your
- broken tree. With this options, it will be very easy to compare
- right or ACL over the time.
-
- Notes: If the file is here, we skip restore and we change rights.
- If the file isn't here, we can create an empty one and apply
- rights or do nothing.
-
-Item 18: Quick release of FD-SD connection after backup.
- Origin: Frank Volf (frank at deze dot org)
- Date: 17 November 2005
- Status: Done -- implemented by Kern -- in CVS 26Jan07
-
- What: In the Bacula implementation a backup is finished after all data
- and attributes are successfully written to storage. When using a
- tape backup it is very annoying that a backup can take a day,
- simply because the current tape (or whatever) is full and the
- administrator has not put a new one in. During that time the
- system cannot be taken off-line, because there is still an open
- session between the storage daemon and the file daemon on the
- client.
-
- Although this is a very good strategy for making "safe backups"
- This can be annoying for e.g. laptops, that must remain
- connected until the backup is completed.
-
- Using a new feature called "migration" it will be possible to
- spool first to harddisk (using a special 'spool' migration
- scheme) and then migrate the backup to tape.
-
- There is still the problem of getting the attributes committed.
- If it takes a very long time to do, with the current code, the
- job has not terminated, and the File daemon is not freed up. The
- Storage daemon should release the File daemon as soon as all the
- file data and all the attributes have been sent to it (the SD).
- Currently the SD waits until everything is on tape and all the
- attributes are transmitted to the Director before signaling
- completion to the FD. I don't think I would have any problem
- changing this. The reason is that even if the FD reports back to
- the Dir that all is OK, the job will not terminate until the SD
- has done the same thing -- so in a way keeping the SD-FD link
- open to the very end is not really very productive ...
-
- Why: Makes backup of laptops much faster.
-
-Item 19: Implement a Python interface to the Bacula catalog.
- Date: 28 October 2005
- Origin: Kern
- Status:
+Item 18: Message mailing based on backup types
+ Origin: Evan Kaufman <evan.kaufman@gmail.com>
+ Date: January 6, 2006
+ Status:
- What: Implement an interface for Python scripts to access
- the catalog through Bacula.
+ 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: This will permit users to customize Bacula through
- Python scripts.
+ 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).
-Item 20: Archive data
- Date: 15/5/2006
- Origin: calvin streeting calvin at absentdream dot com
+ 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 19: 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: The abilty to archive to media (dvd/cd) in a uncompressed format
- for dead filing (archiving not backing up)
-
- Why: At my works when jobs are finished and moved off of the main file
- servers (raid based systems) onto a simple linux file server (ide based
- system) so users can find old information without contacting the IT
- dept.
-
- So this data dosn't realy change it only gets added to,
- But it also needs backing up. At the moment it takes
- about 8 hours to back up our servers (working data) so
- rather than add more time to existing backups i am trying
- to implement a system where we backup the acrhive data to
- cd/dvd these disks would only need to be appended to
- (burn only new/changed files to new disks for off site
- storage). basialy understand the differnce between
- achive data and live data.
-
- Notes: Scan the data and email me when it needs burning divide
- into predifind chunks keep a recored of what is on what
- disk make me a label (simple php->mysql=>pdf stuff) i
- could do this bit ability to save data uncompresed so
- it can be read in any other system (future proof data)
- save the catalog with the disk as some kind of menu
- system
-
-Item 21: Split documentation
- Origin: Maxx <maxxatworkat gmail dot com>
- Date: 27th July 2006
+ 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 20: Job migration between different SDs
+Origin: Mariusz Czulada <manieq AT wp DOT eu>
+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 19. 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 21: 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:
- What: Split documentation in several books
-
- Why: Bacula manual has now more than 600 pages, and looking for
- implementation details is getting complicated. I think
- it would be good to split the single volume in two or
- maybe three parts:
-
- 1) Introduction, requirements and tutorial, typically
- are useful only until first installation time
-
- 2) Basic installation and configuration, with all the
- gory details about the directives supported 3)
- Advanced Bacula: testing, troubleshooting, GUI and
- ancillary programs, security managements, scripting,
- etc.
-
-
-Item 22: Implement support for stacking arbitrary stream filters, sinks.
-Date: 23 November 2006
-Origin: Landon Fuller <landonf@threerings.net>
-Status: Planning. Assigned to landonf.
-
- What: Implement support for the following:
- - Stacking arbitrary stream filters (eg, encryption, compression,
- sparse data handling))
- - Attaching file sinks to terminate stream filters (ie, write out
- the resultant data to a file)
- - Refactor the restoration state machine accordingly
-
- Why: The existing stream implementation suffers from the following:
- - All state (compression, encryption, stream restoration), is
- global across the entire restore process, for all streams. There are
- multiple entry and exit points in the restoration state machine, and
- thus multiple places where state must be allocated, deallocated,
- initialized, or reinitialized. This results in exceptional complexity
- for the author of a stream filter.
- - The developer must enumerate all possible combinations of filters
- and stream types (ie, win32 data with encryption, without encryption,
- with encryption AND compression, etc).
-
- Notes: This feature request only covers implementing the stream filters/
- sinks, and refactoring the file daemon's restoration implementation
- accordingly. If I have extra time, I will also rewrite the backup
- implementation. My intent in implementing the restoration first is to
- solve pressing bugs in the restoration handling, and to ensure that
- the new restore implementation handles existing backups correctly.
-
- I do not plan on changing the network or tape data structures to
- support defining arbitrary stream filters, but supporting that
- functionality is the ultimate goal.
-
- Assistance with either code or testing would be fantastic.
-
-Item 23: Implement from-client and to-client on restore command line.
- Date: 11 December 2006
- Origin: Discussion on Bacula-users entitled 'Scripted restores to
- different clients', December 2006
- Status: New feature request
-
- What: While using bconsole interactively, you can specify the client
- that a backup job is to be restored for, and then you can
- specify later a different client to send the restored files
- back to. However, using the 'restore' command with all options
- on the command line, this cannot be done, due to the ambiguous
- 'client' parameter. Additionally, this parameter means different
- things depending on if it's specified on the command line or
- afterwards, in the Modify Job screens.
-
- Why: This feature would enable restore jobs to be more completely
- automated, for example by a web or GUI front-end.
-
- Notes: client can also be implied by specifying the jobid on the command
- line
+Item 22: 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.
-Item 24: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types.
-Date: 19 Jan 2005
-Origin: Chad Slater <chad.slater@clickfox.com>
+ Notes: Job selection should be by Job, time, Volume, Client, Pool and possibly
+ other criteria.
+
+
+Item 23: 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 24: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
+Date: 19 Jan 2005
+Origin: Chad Slater <chad.slater@clickfox.com>
Status:
- What: Adding a FullStorage=BigTapeLibrary in the Schedule resource
+ 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 device to be backed up, i.e. several
+ 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,
backups, then the Full job would use the proper Storage device, which
has more capacity (i.e. a 8TB tape library.
-Item 25: Implement huge exclude list support using hashing (dlists).
- Date: 28 October 2005
- Origin: Kern
- Status: Done in 2.1.2 but was done with dlists (doubly linked lists
- since hashing will not help. The huge list also supports
- large include lists).
-
- What: Allow users to specify very large exclude list (currently
- more than about 1000 files is too many).
-
- Why: This would give the users the ability to exclude all
- files that are loaded with the OS (e.g. using rpms
- or debs). If the user can restore the base OS from
- CDs, there is no need to backup all those files. A
- complete restore would be to restore the base OS, then
- do a Bacula restore. By excluding the base OS files, the
- backup set will be *much* smaller.
-
-Item 26: Implement more Python events in Bacula.
- Date: 28 October 2005
- Origin: Kern
+
+Item 25: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
+ Date: 19 January 2006
+ Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton@sinenomine.net>
Status:
- What: Allow Python scripts to be called at more places
- within Bacula and provide additional access to Bacula
- internal variables.
-
- Why: This will permit users to customize Bacula through
- Python scripts.
-
- Notes: Recycle event
- Scratch pool event
- NeedVolume event
- MediaFull event
-
- Also add a way to get a listing of currently running
- jobs (possibly also scheduled jobs).
-
-
-Item 27: Incorporation of XACML2/SAML2 parsing
- Date: 19 January 2006
- Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton@sinenomine.net>
- Status: Blue sky
-
- What: XACML is "eXtensible Access Control Markup Language" and
- "SAML is the "Security Assertion Markup Language"--an XML standard
- for making statements about identity and authorization. Having these
- would give us a framework to approach ACLs in a generic manner, and
- in a way flexible enough to support the four major sorts of ACLs I
- see as a concern to Bacula at this point, as well as (probably) to
- deal with new sorts of ACLs that may appear in the future.
-
- Why: Bacula is beginning to need to back up systems with ACLs
- that do not map cleanly onto traditional Unix permissions. I see
- four sets of ACLs--in general, mutually incompatible with one
- another--that we're going to need to deal with. These are: NTFS
- ACLs, POSIX ACLs, NFSv4 ACLS, and AFS ACLS. (Some may question the
- relevance of AFS; AFS is one of Sine Nomine's core consulting
- businesses, and having a reputable file-level backup and restore
- technology for it (as Tivoli is probably going to drop AFS support
- soon since IBM no longer supports AFS) would be of huge benefit to
- our customers; we'd most likely create the AFS support at Sine Nomine
- for inclusion into the Bacula (and perhaps some changes to the
- OpenAFS volserver) core code.)
-
- Now, obviously, Bacula already handles NTFS just fine. However, I
- think there's a lot of value in implementing a generic ACL model, so
- that it's easy to support whatever particular instances of ACLs come
- down the pike: POSIX ACLS (think SELinux) and NFSv4 are the obvious
- things arriving in the Linux world in a big way in the near future.
- XACML, although overcomplicated for our needs, provides this
- framework, and we should be able to leverage other people's
- implementations to minimize the amount of work *we* have to do to get
- a generic ACL framework. Basically, the costs of implementation are
- high, but they're largely both external to Bacula and already sunk.
-
-Item 28: Filesystem watch triggered backup.
- Date: 31 August 2006
- Origin: Jesper Krogh <jesper@krogh.cc>
- Status: Unimplemented, depends probably on "client initiated backups"
-
- What: With inotify and similar filesystem triggeret notification
- systems is it possible to have the file-daemon to monitor
- filesystem changes and initiate backup.
-
- Why: There are 2 situations where this is nice to have.
- 1) It is possible to get a much finer-grained backup than
- the fixed schedules used now.. A file created and deleted
- a few hours later, can automatically be caught.
-
- 2) The introduced load on the system will probably be
- distributed more even on the system.
-
- Notes: This can be combined with configration that specifies
- something like: "at most every 15 minutes or when changes
- consumed XX MB".
-
-Kern Notes: I would rather see this implemented by an external program
- that monitors the Filesystem changes, then uses the console
- to start the appropriate job.
-
-Item 29: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
+ 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 26: Allow FileSet inclusion/exclusion by creation/mod times
Origin: Evan Kaufman <evan.kaufman@gmail.com>
- Date: January 11, 2006
+ Date: January 11, 2006
Status:
- What: In the vein of the Wild and Regex directives in a Fileset's
+ 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.
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
+ 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
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
+ 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
+ Notes: The directives I'd imagine would be along the lines of
"[Created] [Modified] [Before|Since] = <date>".
So one could compare against 'ctime' and/or 'mtime', but ONLY 'before'
or 'since'.
-Item 30: Tray monitor window cleanups
- Origin: Alan Brown ajb2 at mssl dot ucl dot ac dot uk
- Date: 24 July 2006
- Status:
- What: Resizeable and scrollable windows in the tray monitor.
+Item 27: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
+ Date: Nov. 24/2005
+ Origin: Ray Pengelly [ray at biomed dot queensu dot ca
+ Status:
- Why: With multiple clients, or with many jobs running, the displayed
- window often ends up larger than the available screen, making
- the trailing items difficult to read.
+ 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.
-Item 31: Implement multiple numeric backup levels as supported by dump
-Date: 3 April 2006
-Origin: Daniel Rich <drich@employees.org>
-Status:
-What: Dump allows specification of backup levels numerically instead of just
- "full", "incr", and "diff". In this system, at any given level, all
- files are backed up that were were modified since the last backup of a
- higher level (with 0 being the highest and 9 being the lowest). A
- level 0 is therefore equivalent to a full, level 9 an incremental, and
- the levels 1 through 8 are varying levels of differentials. For
- bacula's sake, these could be represented as "full", "incr", and
- "diff1", "diff2", etc.
-
-Why: Support of multiple backup levels would provide for more advanced backup
- rotation schemes such as "Towers of Hanoi". This would allow better
- flexibility in performing backups, and can lead to shorter recover
- times.
-
-Notes: Legato Networker supports a similar system with full, incr, and 1-9 as
- levels.
-
-Item 32: Automatic promotion of backup levels
- Date: 19 January 2006
- Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton@sinenomine.net>
+ 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 28: Ability to reconnect a disconnected comm line
+ Date: 26 April 2009
+ Origin: Kern/Eric
Status:
- What: Amanda has 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
- Amanda can do and we can't (at least, the one cool thing I know of).
-
-Item 33: Clustered file-daemons
- Origin: Alan Brown ajb2 at mssl dot ucl dot ac dot uk
- Date: 24 July 2006
- Status:
- What: A "virtual" filedaemon, which is actually a cluster of real ones.
+ 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: In the case of clustered filesystems (SAN setups, GFS, or OCFS2, etc)
- multiple machines may have access to the same set of filesystems
+ Why: Avoids backuping data already saved.
- For performance reasons, one may wish to initate backups from
- several of these machines simultaneously, instead of just using
- one backup source for the common clustered filesystem.
+ Notes: *Very* complicated from a design point of view because of authenication.
- For obvious reasons, normally backups of $A-FD/$PATH and
- B-FD/$PATH are treated as different backup sets. In this case
- they are the same communal set.
+Item 29: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
+ Date: 27 November 2005
+ Origin: Ove Risberg (Ove.Risberg at octocode dot com)
+ Status:
- Likewise when restoring, it would be easier to just specify
- one of the cluster machines and let bacula decide which to use.
+ What: I want the file daemon to start multiple threads for a backup
+ job so the fastest possible backup can be made.
- This can be faked to some extent using DNS round robin entries
- and a virtual IP address, however it means "status client" will
- always give bogus answers. Additionally there is no way of
- spreading the load evenly among the servers.
+ The file daemon could parse the FileSet information and start
+ one thread for each File entry located on a separate
+ filesystem.
- What is required is something similar to the storage daemon
- autochanger directives, so that Bacula can keep track of
- operating backups/restores and direct new jobs to a "free"
- client.
+ 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.
- Notes:
+ If the theads could spool the data to separate spool files
+ the restore process will not be much slower.
-Item 34: Commercial database support
- Origin: Russell Howe <russell_howe dot wreckage dot org>
- Date: 26 July 2006
- Status:
+ Why: Multiple concurrent backups of a large fileserver with many
+ disks and controllers will be much faster.
- What: It would be nice for the database backend to support more
- databases. I'm thinking of SQL Server at the moment, but I guess Oracle,
- DB2, MaxDB, etc are all candidates. SQL Server would presumably be
- implemented using FreeTDS or maybe an ODBC library?
-
- Why: We only really have one database server, which is MS SQL Server
- 2000. Maintaining a second one for the backup software (we grew out of
- SQLite, which I liked, but which didn't work so well with our database
- size). We don't really have a machine with the resources to run
- postgres, and would rather only maintain a single DBMS. We're stuck with
- SQL Server because pretty much all the company's custom applications
- (written by consultants) are locked into SQL Server 2000. I can imagine
- this scenario is fairly common, and it would be nice to use the existing
- properly specced database server for storing Bacula's catalog, rather
- than having to run a second DBMS.
-
-Item 35: Automatic disabling of devices
- Date: 2005-11-11
+ Notes: (KES) This is not necessary and could be accomplished
+ by having two jobs. In addition, the current VSS code
+ is single thread.
+
+
+Item 30: Automatic disabling of devices
+ Date: 2005-11-11
Origin: Peter Eriksson <peter at ifm.liu dot se>
Status:
- What: After a configurable amount of fatal errors with a tape drive
+ 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
+ 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
further use of that drive and used one of the other ones
instead.
-Item 36: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
- Origin: Dmitriy Pinchukov <absh@bossdev.kiev.ua>
- Date: 16 August 2006
- Status:
-
- 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 37: Add an item to the restore option where you can select a pool
- Origin: kshatriyak at gmail dot com
- Date: 1/1/2006
- Status:
-
- What: In the restore option (Select the most recent backup for a
- client) it would be useful to add an option where you can limit
- the selection to a certain pool.
-
- Why: When using cloned jobs, most of the time you have 2 pools - a
- disk pool and a tape pool. People who have 2 pools would like to
- select the most recent backup from disk, not from tape (tape
- would be only needed in emergency). However, the most recent
- backup (which may just differ a second from the disk backup) may
- be on tape and would be selected. The problem becomes bigger if
- you have a full and differential - the most "recent" full backup
- may be on disk, while the most recent differential may be on tape
- (though the differential on disk may differ even only a second or
- so). Bacula will complain that the backups reside on different
- media then. For now the only solution now when restoring things
- when you have 2 pools is to manually search for the right
- job-id's and enter them by hand, which is a bit fault tolerant.
-
-Item 38: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
- Origin: Mark Bergman <mark.bergman@uphs.upenn.edu>
- 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 39: Message mailing based on backup types
- Origin: Evan Kaufman <evan.kaufman@gmail.com>
- 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
- }
-
-
-Item 40: Include JobID in spool file name ****DONE****
- Origin: Mark Bergman <mark.bergman@uphs.upenn.edu>
- Date: Tue Aug 22 17:13:39 EDT 2006
- Status: Done. (patches/testing/project-include-jobid-in-spool-name.patch)
- No need to vote for this item.
-
- What: Change the name of the spool file to include the JobID
-
- Why: JobIDs are the common key used to refer to jobs, yet the
- spoolfile name doesn't include that information. The date/time
- stamp is useful (and should be retained).
-
-============= New Freature Requests after vote of 26 Jan 2007 ========
-Item 41: Enable to relocate files and directories when restoring
- Date: 2007-03-01
- Origin: Eric Bollengier <eric@eb.homelinux.org>
- Status: Done.
-
- What: The where= option is not powerful enough. It will be
- a great feature if bacula can restore a file in the
- same directory, but with a different name, or in
- an other directory without recreating the full path.
-
- Why: When i want to restore a production environment to a
- development environment, i just want change the first
- directory. ie restore /prod/data/file.dat to /rect/data/file.dat.
- At this time, i have to move by hand files. You must have a big
- dump space to restore and move data after.
-
- When i use Linux or SAN snapshot, i mount them to /mnt/snap_xxx
- so, when a restore a file, i have to move by hand
- from /mnt/snap_xxx/file to /xxx/file. I can't replace a file
- easily.
-
- When a user ask me to restore a file in its personal folder,
- (without replace the existing one), i can't restore from
- my_file.txt to my_file.txt.old witch is very practical.
-
-
- Notes: I think we can enhance the where= option very easily by
- allowing regexp expression.
+Item 31: Enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries
+ Date: 24 Jan, 2007
+ Origin: Mark Bergman
+ Status:
- Since, many users think that regexp are not user friendly, i think
- that bat, bconsole or brestore must provide a simple way to
- configure where= option (i think to something like in
- openoffice "search and replace").
+ 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
- Ie, if user uses where=/tmp/bacula-restore, we keep the old
- fashion.
+ Notes:
+ Alternatively, queries could be called by keyword (tag), rather
+ than by number.
+
+
+Item 32: Bacula Dir, FD and SD to support proxies
+Origin: Karl Grindley @ MIT Lincoln Laboratory <kgrindley at ll dot mit dot edu>
+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 33: Add Minumum Spool Size directive
+Date: 20 March 2008
+Origin: Frank Sweetser <fs@wpi.edu>
+
+ 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 34: 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 35: Run bscan on a remote storage daemon from within bconsole.
+ Date: 07 October 2009
+ Origin: Graham Keeling <graham@equiinet.com>
+ 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=<storage> device=<device> volume=<volume>
+ or something like:
+ *bscan storage=<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 36: 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 <gavin.mccullagh@gcd.ie>
+ Status:
- If user uses something like where=s!/prod!/test!, files will
- be restored from /prod/xxx to /test/xxx.
+ 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 37: Separate "Storage" and "Device" in the bacula-dir.conf
+ Date: 29 April 2009
+ Origin: "James Harper" <james.harper@bendigoit.com.au>
+ 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
+ }
- If user uses something like where=s/$/.old/, files will
- be restored from /prod/xxx.txt to /prod/xxx.txt.old.
+ Device {
+ Name = name_of_device
+ Storage = name_of_server
+ Device = name_of_device_on_sd
+ Media Type = media_type
+ Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1
+ }
- If user uses something like where=s/txt$/old.txt/, files will
- be restored from /prod/xxx.txt to /prod/xxx.old.txt
+ Maximum Concurrent Jobs would be specified with a server and a device
+ maximum, which would both be honoured by the director. Almost everything
+ that mentions a 'Storage' would need to be changed to 'Device', although
+ perhaps a 'Storage' would just be a synonym for 'Device' for backwards
+ compatibility...
- if user uses something like where=s/([a-z]+)$/old.$1/, files will
- be restored from /prod/xxx.ext to /prod/xxx.old.ext
+ 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.
-Item n: Implement Catalog directive for Pool resource in Director
-configuration
- Origin: Alan Davis adavis@ruckus.com
- Date: 6 March 2007
- Status: Submitted
-
- What: The current behavior is for the director to create all pools
- found in the configuration file in all catalogs. Add a
- Catalog directive to the Pool resource to specify which
- catalog to use for each pool definition.
-
- Why: This allows different catalogs to have different pool
- attributes and eliminates the side-effect of adding
- pools to catalogs that don't need/use them.
-
Notes:
+Item 38: Least recently used device selection for tape drives in autochanger.
+Date: 12 October 2009
+Origin: Thomas Carter <tcarter@memc.com>
+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:
+
+Item 39: Implement a Storage device like Amazon's S3.
+ Date: 25 August 2008
+ Origin: Soren Hansen <soren@ubuntu.com>
+ 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 40: 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 41: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management
+ Date: 8 November 2005, November 11, 2005
+ Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton at sinenomine dot net>,
+ Arno Lehmann <al at its-lehmann dot de>
+ Status:
-Item n: Implement NDMP protocol support
- Origin: Alan Davis
- Date: 06 March 2007
- Status: Submitted
+ What:
+ 1. Measure tape and drive usage (mostly implemented)
+ 2. Retiring a volume when too old or too many errors
+ 3. Handle cleaning and tape alerts.
- What: Network Data Management Protocol is implemented by a number of
- NAS filer vendors to enable backups using third-party
- software.
+ Why: Needed
- Why: This would allow NAS filer backups in Bacula without incurring
- the overhead of NFS or SBM/CIFS.
- Notes: Further information is available:
- http://www.ndmp.org
- http://www.ndmp.org/wp/wp.shtml
- http://www.traakan.com/ndmjob/index.html
+Item 42: Relabel disk volume after recycling
+ Origin: Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@iki.fi>
+ Date: 07 May 2009.
+ Status: Not implemented yet, no code written.
- There are currently no viable open-source NDMP
- implementations. There is a reference SDK and example
- app available from ndmp.org but it has problems
- compiling on recent Linux and Solaris OS'. The ndmjob
- reference implementation from Traakan is known to
- compile on Solaris 10.
+ 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}"
- Notes (Kern): I am not at all in favor of this until NDMP becomes
- an Open Standard or until there are Open Source libraries
- that interface to it.
+ 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.
-Item n: make changing "spooldata=yes|no" possible for
- manual/interactive jobs
+ Notes: The configuration option could be "Relabel after Recycling = Yes".
-Origin: Marc Schiffbauer <marc@schiffbauer.net>
-Date: 12 April 2007)
-Status: NEW
+========= New items after last vote ====================
+
-What: Make it possible to modify the spooldata option
- for a job when being run from within the console.
- Currently it is possible to modify the backup level
- and the spooldata setting in a Schedule resource.
- It is also possible to modify the backup level when using
- the "run" command in the console.
- But it is currently not possible to to the same
- with "spooldata=yes|no" like:
+Note to renumber items use:
+scripts/renumber_projects.pl projects >1
- run job=MyJob level=incremental spooldata=yes
-Why: In some situations it would be handy to be able to switch
- spooldata on or off for interactive/manual jobs based on
- which data the admin expects or how fast the LAN/WAN
- connection currently is.
+========= Add new items above this line =================
-Notes: ./.
============= Empty Feature Request form ===========
-Item n: One line summary ...
- Date: Date submitted
+Item n: One line summary ...
+ Date: Date submitted
Origin: Name and email of originator.
Status:
- What: More detailed explanation ...
+ What: More detailed explanation ...
- Why: Why it is important ...
+ Why: Why it is important ...
- Notes: Additional notes or features (omit if not used)
+ 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 : 'restore' menu: enter a JobId, automatically select dependents
+*Item : Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned (partial -- truncate when pruned)
+*Item : Implement Base jobs
+*Item : Restore from volumes on multiple storage daemons
+*Item : Enable/disable compression depending on storage device (disk/tape)
+*Item : Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
+*Item : "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" for drives when used with changer device
+*Item : List InChanger flag when doing restore.
+*Item : Port bat to Win32
+*Item : An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
+========== Item completed after 5.0.0 ==========================
+*Item : Add ability to Verify any specified Job.
projects / bacula / bacula / blobdiff