Projects:
Bacula Projects Roadmap
- Status updated 04 February 2009
-
-Items Completed for version 3.0.0:
-Item 1: Accurate restoration of renamed/deleted files
-Item 3: Merge multiple backups (Synthetic Backup or Consolidation)
-Item 4: Implement Catalog directive for Pool resource in Director
-Item 5: Add an item to the restore option where you can select a Pool
-Item 8: Implement Copy pools
-Item 12: Add Plug-ins to the FileSet Include statements.
-Item 13: Restore only file attributes (permissions, ACL, owner, group...)
-Item 18: Better control over Job execution
-Item 26: Store and restore extended attributes, especially selinux file contexts
-Item 27: make changing "spooldata=yes|no" possible for
-Item 28: Implement an option to modify the last written date for volumes
+ Status updated 14 Jun 2009
Summary:
-Item 2: Allow FD to initiate a backup
-Item 6: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
-Item 7: Implement Base jobs
-Item 9: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
-Item 10: Message mailing based on backup types
-Item 11: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
-Item 14: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
-Item 15: Implement more Python events and functions --- Abandoned for plugins
-Item 16: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
-Item 17: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
-Item 19: Automatic disabling of devices
-Item 20: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
-Item 21: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
-Item 22: Implement Storage daemon compression
-Item 23: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management
-Item 24: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
-Item 25: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
-
-
-Item 1: Accurate restoration of renamed/deleted files
- Date: 28 November 2005
- Origin: Martin Simmons (martin at lispworks dot com)
- Status: Done
-
- 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.
-
- Note: 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.
-
- Notes: 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: 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 3: Merge multiple backups (Synthetic Backup or Consolidation)
- Origin: Marc Cousin and Eric Bollengier
- Date: 15 November 2005
- Status: 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 4: Implement Catalog directive for Pool resource in Director
- Origin: Alan Davis adavis@ruckus.com
- Date: 6 March 2007
- Status: Done, but not tested, and possibly not fully implemented.
-
- 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: Kern: I think this is relatively easy to do, and it is really
- a pre-requisite to a number of the Copy pool, ... projects
- that are listed here.
-
-Item 5: Add an item to the restore option where you can select a Pool
- Origin: kshatriyak at gmail dot com
- Date: 1/1/2006
- Status: Done at least via command line
-
- 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.
-
- Notes: Kern: This is a nice idea. It could also be the way to support
- Jobs that have been Copied (similar to migration, but not yet
- implemented).
-
-
-
-Item 6: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
- 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 7: Implement Base jobs
- Date: 28 October 2005
- Origin: Kern
- Status:
-
- 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 8: Implement Copy pools
- Date: 27 November 2005
- Origin: David Boyes (dboyes at sinenomine dot net)
- Status: A trivial version of this is done.
-
- 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.
-
- Notes: Additional notes from David:
- I think there's two areas where new configuration would be needed.
-
- 1) Identify a "SD mux" SD (specify it in the config just like a
- normal SD. The SD configuration would need something like a
- "Daemon Type = Normal/Mux" keyword to identify it as a
- multiplexor. (The director code would need modification to add
- the ability to do the multiple session setup, but the impact of
- the change would be new code that was invoked only when a SDmux is
- needed).
-
- 2) Additional keywords in the Pool definition to identify the need
- to create copies. Each pool would acquire a Copypool= attribute
- (may be repeated to generate more than one copy. 3 is about the
- practical limit, but no point in hardcoding that).
-
- Example:
- Pool {
- Name = Primary
- Pool Type = Backup
- Copypool = Copy1
- Copypool = OffsiteCopy2
- }
-
- where Copy1 and OffsiteCopy2 are valid pools.
-
- In terms of function (shorthand): Backup job X is defined
- normally, specifying pool Primary as the pool to use. Job gets
- scheduled, and Bacula starts scheduling resources. Scheduler
- looks at pool definition for Primary, sees that there are a
- non-zero number of copypool keywords. The director then connects
- to an available SDmux, passes it the pool ids for Primary, Copy1,
- and OffsiteCopy2 and waits. SDmux then goes out and reserves
- devices and volumes in the normal SDs that serve Primary, Copy1
- and OffsiteCopy2. When all are ready, the SDmux signals ready
- back to the director, and the FD is given the address of the SDmux
- as the SD to communicate with. Backup proceeds normally, with the
- SDmux duplicating blocks to each connected normal SD, and
- returning ready when all defined copies have been written. At
- EOJ, FD shuts down connection with SDmux, which closes down the
- normal SD connections and goes back to an idle state. SDmux does
- not update database; normal SDs do (noting that file is present on
- each volume it has been written to).
-
- On restore, director looks for the volume containing the file in
- pool Primary first, then Copy1, then OffsiteCopy2. If the volume
- holding the file in pool Primary is missing or busy (being written
- in another job, etc), or one of the volumes from the copypool list
- that have the file in question is already mounted and ready for
- some reason, use it to do the restore, else mount one of the
- copypool volumes and proceed.
-
-
-Item 9: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
- Date: 15 December 2006
+* => item complete
+
+ Item 1: Ability to restart failed jobs
+*Item 2: 'restore' menu: enter a JobId, automatically select dependents
+ Item 3: Scheduling syntax that permits more flexibility and options
+ Item 4: Data encryption on storage daemon
+*Item 5: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned (partial -- truncate when pruned)
+*Item 6: Implement Base jobs
+ Item 7: Add ability to Verify any specified Job.
+ Item 8: Improve Bacula's tape and drive usage and cleaning management
+ Item 9: Allow FD to initiate a backup
+*Item 10: Restore from volumes on multiple storage daemons
+ Item 11: Implement Storage daemon compression
+ Item 12: Reduction of communications bandwidth for a backup
+ Item 13: Ability to reconnect a disconnected comm line
+ Item 14: Start spooling even when waiting on tape
+*Item 15: Enable/disable compression depending on storage device (disk/tape)
+ Item 16: Include all conf files in specified directory
+ Item 17: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
+ Item 18: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month
+ Item 19: Include timestamp of job launch in "stat clients" output
+*Item 20: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
+ Item 21: Message mailing based on backup types
+ Item 22: Ability to import/export Bacula database entities
+*Item 23: "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" for drives when used with changer device
+ Item 24: Implementation of running Job speed limit.
+ Item 25: Add an override in Schedule for Pools based on backup types
+ Item 26: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
+ Item 27: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
+ Item 28: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
+ Item 29: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
+ Item 30: Automatic disabling of devices
+*Item 31: List InChanger flag when doing restore.
+ Item 32: Ability to defer Batch Insert to a later time
+ Item 33: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes statement to Storage resource
+ Item 34: Enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries
+*Item 35: Port bat to Win32
+ Item 36: Bacula Dir, FD and SD to support proxies
+ Item 37: Add Minumum Spool Size directive
+ Item 38: Backup and Restore of Windows Encrypted Files using Win raw encryption
+ Item 39: Implement an interface between Bacula and Amazon's S3.
+ Item 40: Convert Bacula existing tray monitor on Windows to a stand alone program
+
+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: 'restore' menu: enter a JobId, automatically select dependents
+Origin: Graham Keeling (graham@equiinet.com)
+Date: 13 March 2009
+Status: Done in 3.0.2
+
+What: Add to the bconsole 'restore' menu the ability to select a job
+ by JobId, and have bacula automatically select all the
+ dependent jobs.
+
+ Why: Currently, you either have to...
+
+ a) laboriously type in a date that is greater than the date of the
+ backup that you want and is less than the subsequent backup (bacula
+ then figures out the dependent jobs), or
+ b) manually figure out all the JobIds that you want and laboriously
+ type them all in. It would be extremely useful (in a programmatical
+ sense, as well as for humans) to be able to just give it a single JobId
+ and let bacula do the hard work (work that it already knows how to do).
+
+ Notes (Kern): I think this should either be modified to have Bacula
+ print a list of dates that the user can choose from as is done in
+ bwx-console and bat or the name of this command must be carefully
+ chosen so that the user clearly understands that the JobId is being
+ used to specify what Job and the date to which he wishes the restore to
+ happen.
+
+
+Item 3: 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
jobs (via Schedule syntax) into this.
-Item 10: Message mailing based on backup types
- Origin: Evan Kaufman <evan.kaufman@gmail.com>
- Date: January 6, 2006
- Status:
+Item 4: Data encryption on storage daemon
+ Origin: Tobias Barth <tobias.barth at web-arts.com>
+ Date: 04 February 2009
+ Status: new
- 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).
+ What: The storage demon should be able to do the data encryption that can
+ currently be done by the file daemon.
- 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).
+ 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: One way this could be done is through additional message types, for example:
+ 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
- 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 5: Deletion of disk Volumes when pruned
+ Date: Nov 25, 2005
+ Origin: Ross Boylan <RossBoylan at stanfordalumni dot org> (edited
+ by Kern)
+ Status: Truncate operation implemented in 3.1.4
+ 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.
-Item 11: 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.
+ 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:
-Item 12: Add Plug-ins to the FileSet Include statements.
- Date: 28 October 2005
- Origin: Kern
- Status: Partially coded in 1.37 -- much more to do.
+ Volume Data Retention = <time period>
+ Remove Volume After = <time period>
- 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).
+ The migration project should also remove a Volume that is
+ migrated. This might also work for tape Volumes.
- 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.
+ Notes: (Kern). The data fields to control this have been added
+ to the new 3.0.0 database table structure.
-Item 13: Restore only file attributes (permissions, ACL, owner, group...)
- Origin: Eric Bollengier
- Date: 30/12/2006
- Status: Implemented by Eric, see project-restore-attributes-only.patch
+Item 6: Implement Base jobs
+ Date: 28 October 2005
+ Origin: Kern
+ Status:
+
+ 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.
- What: The goal of this project is to be able to restore only rights
- and attributes of files without crushing them.
+ 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.
- 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: 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.
- 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.
- This will not work with win32 stream, because it seems that we
- can't split the WriteBackup stream to get only ACL and ownerchip.
+Item 7: Add ability to Verify any specified Job.
+Date: 17 January 2008
+Origin: portrix.net Hamburg, Germany.
+Contact: Christian Sabelmann
+Status: 70% of the required Code is part of the Verify function since v. 2.x
-Item 14: 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
- would help those of us who use different storage devices for different
- backup levels cope with the "auto-upgrade" of a backup.
+ What:
+ The ability to tell Bacula which Job should verify instead of
+ automatically verify just the last one.
- Why: Assume I add several new devices to be backed up, i.e. several
- hosts with 1TB RAID. To avoid tape switching hassles, incrementals are
- stored in a disk set on a 2TB RAID. If you add these devices in the
- middle of the month, the incrementals are upgraded to "full" backups,
- but they try to use the same storage device as requested in the
- incremental job, filling up the RAID holding the differentials. If we
- could override the Storage parameter for full and/or differential
- backups, then the Full job would use the proper Storage device, which
- has more capacity (i.e. a 8TB tape library.
+ 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 15: Implement more Python events and functions
- Date: 28 October 2005
- Origin: Kern
- Status: Project abandoned in favor of plugins.
+Item 8: 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:
- What: Allow Python scripts to be called at more places
- within Bacula and provide additional access to Bacula
- internal variables.
+ What: Make Bacula manage tape life cycle information, tape reuse
+ times and drive cleaning cycles.
- Implement an interface for Python scripts to access the
- catalog through Bacula.
+ 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...)
- Why: This will permit users to customize Bacula through
- Python scripts.
+ 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.
- 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).
+ 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.
- to start the appropriate job.
+ 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 16: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
- Origin: Evan Kaufman <evan.kaufman@gmail.com>
- Date: January 11, 2006
- Status:
- What: In the vein of the Wild and Regex directives in a Fileset's
- Options, it would be helpful to allow a user to include or exclude
- files and directories by creation or modification times.
+Item 9: Allow FD to initiate a backup
+Origin: Frank Volf (frank at deze dot org)
+Date: 17 November 2005
+Status:
- You could factor the Exclude=yes|no option in much the same way it
- affects the Wild and Regex directives. For example, you could exclude
- all files modified before a certain date:
+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.
- Options {
- Exclude = yes
- Modified Before = ####
- }
- Or you could exclude all files created/modified since a certain date:
+Item 10: Restore from volumes on multiple storage daemons
+Origin: Graham Keeling (graham@equiinet.com)
+Date: 12 March 2009
+Status: Done in 3.0.2
- Options {
- Exclude = yes
- Created Modified Since = ####
- }
+What: The ability to restore from volumes held by multiple storage daemons
+ would be very useful.
- The format of the time/date could be done several ways, say the number
- of seconds since the epoch:
- 1137008553 = Jan 11 2006, 1:42:33PM # result of `date +%s`
+Why: It is useful to be able to backup to any number of different storage
+ daemons. For example, your first storage daemon may run out of space,
+ so you switch to your second and carry on. Bacula will currently let
+ you do this. However, once you come to restore, bacula cannot cope
+ when volumes on different storage daemons are required.
- Or a human readable date in a cryptic form:
- 20060111134233 = Jan 11 2006, 1:42:33PM # YYYYMMDDhhmmss
+ Notes: The director knows that more than one storage daemon is needed,
+ as bconsole outputs something like the following table.
- Why: I imagine a feature like this could have many uses. It would
- allow a user to do a full backup while excluding the base operating
- system files, so if I installed a Linux snapshot from a CD yesterday,
- I'll *exclude* all files modified *before* today. If I need to
- recover the system, I use the CD I already have, plus the tape backup.
- Or if, say, a Windows client is hit by a particularly corrosive
- virus, and I need to *exclude* any files created/modified *since* the
- time of infection.
-
- Notes: Of course, this feature would work in concert with other
- in/exclude rules, and wouldnt override them (or each other).
-
- Notes: The directives I'd imagine would be along the lines of
- "[Created] [Modified] [Before|Since] = <date>".
- So one could compare against 'ctime' and/or 'mtime', but ONLY 'before'
- or 'since'.
-
-
-Item 17: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
- Date: 19 January 2006
- Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton@sinenomine.net>
- 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 18: Better control over Job execution
- Date: 18 August 2007
- Origin: Kern
- Status:
-
- What: Bacula needs a few extra features for better Job execution:
- 1. A way to prevent multiple Jobs of the same name from
- being scheduled at the same time (ususally happens when
- a job is missed because a client is down).
- 2. Directives that permit easier upgrading of Job types
- based on a period of time. I.e. "do a Full at least
- once every 2 weeks", or "do a differential at least
- once a week". If a lower level job is scheduled when
- it begins to run it will be upgraded depending on
- the specified criteria.
-
- Why: Obvious.
-
-
-Item 19: 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
- Bacula should automatically disable further use of a certain
- tape drive. There should also be "disable"/"enable" commands in
- the "bconsole" tool.
-
- Why: On a multi-drive jukebox there is a possibility of tape drives
- going bad during large backups (needing a cleaning tape run,
- tapes getting stuck). It would be advantageous if Bacula would
- automatically disable further use of a problematic tape drive
- after a configurable amount of errors has occurred.
-
- An example: I have a multi-drive jukebox (6 drives, 380+ slots)
- where tapes occasionally get stuck inside the drive. Bacula will
- notice that the "mtx-changer" command will fail and then fail
- any backup jobs trying to use that drive. However, it will still
- keep on trying to run new jobs using that drive and fail -
- forever, and thus failing lots and lots of jobs... Since we have
- many drives Bacula could have just automatically disabled
- further use of that drive and used one of the other ones
- instead.
-
-Item 20: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
- Origin: Dmitriy Pinchukov <absh@bossdev.kiev.ua>
- Date: 16 August 2006
- Status: Patch made by Nigel Stepp
-
- What: When I do update -> Volume parameters -> All Volumes
- from Pool, then I have to select pools one by one. I'd like
- console to have an option like "0: All Pools" in the list of
- defined pools.
-
- Why: I have many pools and therefore unhappy with manually
- updating each of them using update -> Volume parameters -> All
- Volumes from Pool -> pool #.
-
-
-Item 21: 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 22: Implement Storage daemon compression
- Date: 18 December 2006
+ The job will require the following
+ Volume(s) Storage(s) SD Device(s)
+ =====================================================================
+
+ backup-0001 Disk 1 Disk 1.0
+ backup-0002 Disk 2 Disk 2.0
+
+ However, the bootstrap file that it creates gets sent to the first
+ storage daemon only, which then stalls for a long time, 'waiting for a
+ mount request' for the volume that it doesn't have. The bootstrap file
+ contains no knowledge of the storage daemon. Under the current design:
+
+ The director connects to the storage daemon, and gets an sd_auth_key.
+ The director then connects to the file daemon, and gives it the
+ sd_auth_key with the 'jobcmd'. (restoring of files happens) The
+ director does a 'wait_for_storage_daemon_termination()'. The director
+ waits for the file daemon to indicate the end of the job.
+
+ With my idea:
+
+ The director connects to the file daemon.
+ Then, for each storage daemon in the .bsr file... {
+ The director connects to the storage daemon, and gets an sd_auth_key.
+ The director then connects to the file daemon, and gives it the
+ sd_auth_key with the 'storaddr' command.
+ (restoring of files happens)
+ The director does a 'wait_for_storage_daemon_termination()'.
+ The director waits for the file daemon to indicate the end of the
+ work on this storage.
+ }
+
+ The director tells the file daemon that there are no more storages to
+ contact. The director waits for the file daemon to indicate the end of
+ the job. As you can see, each restore between the file daemon and
+ storage daemon is handled in the same way that it is currently handled,
+ using the same method for authentication, except that the sd_auth_key
+ is moved from the 'jobcmd' to the 'storaddr' command - where it
+ logically belongs.
+
+
+Item 11: 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
+ 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
+ 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).
That's why the server-side compression feature is needed!
Notes:
-Item 23: 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:
- What: Make Bacula manage tape life cycle information, tape reuse
- times and drive cleaning cycles.
+Item 12: Reduction of communications bandwidth for a backup
+ Date: 14 October 2008
+ Origin: Robin O'Leary (Equiinet)
+ Status:
- 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...)
+ What: Using rdiff techniques, Bacula could significantly reduce
+ the network data transfer volume to do a backup.
- 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.
+ Why: Faster backup across the Internet
- 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.
+ Notes: This requires retaining certain data on the client during a Full
+ backup that will speed up subsequent backups.
+
+
+Item 13: Ability to reconnect a disconnected comm line
+ Date: 26 April 2009
+ Origin: Kern/Eric
+ Status:
- 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.
+ 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.
- 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.
+ Why: Avoids backuping data already saved.
- Implementation of these projects could happen in three distinct
- sub-projects: Measuring Tape and Drive usage, retiring
- volumes, and handling drive cleaning and TAPEALERTs.
+ Notes: *Very* complicated from a design point of view because of authenication.
-Item 24: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
- Date: 27 November 2005
- Origin: Ove Risberg (Ove.Risberg at octocode dot com)
+Item 14: Start spooling even when waiting on tape
+ Origin: Tobias Barth <tobias.barth@web-arts.com>
+ Date: 25 April 2008
Status:
- What: I want the file daemon to start multiple threads for a backup
- job so the fastest possible backup can be made.
+ 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.
- The file daemon could parse the FileSet information and start
- one thread for each File entry located on a separate
- filesystem.
-
- A confiuration option in the job section should be used to
- enable or disable this feature. The confgutration option could
- specify the maximum number of threads in the file daemon.
-
- If the theads could spool the data to separate spool files
- the restore process will not be much slower.
+ Why: 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.
- Why: Multiple concurrent backups of a large fileserver with many
- disks and controllers will be much faster.
+ Notes: I am using bacula 2.2.8, which has none of those features
+ implemented.
-Item 25: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
- Date: Nov. 24/2005
- Origin: Ray Pengelly [ray at biomed dot queensu dot ca
- Status:
- What: The ability to archive data to storage based on certain parameters
- such as age, size, or location. Once the data has been written to
- storage and logged it is then pruned from the originating
- filesystem. Note! We are talking about user's files and not
- Bacula Volumes.
+Item 15: Enable/disable compression depending on storage device (disk/tape)
+ Origin: Ralf Gross ralf-lists@ralfgross.de
+ Date: 2008-01-11
+ Status: Done
- 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.
+ What: Add a new option to the storage resource of the director. Depending
+ on this option, compression will be enabled/disabled for a device.
- 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.
+ Why: If different devices (disks/tapes) are used for full/diff/incr
+ backups, software compression will be enabled for all backups
+ because of the FileSet compression option. For backup to tapes
+ wich are able to do hardware compression this is not desired.
+
- 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.
+ Notes:
+ http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.backup.bacula.devel/cutoff=11124
+ It must be clear to the user, that the FileSet compression option
+ must still be enabled use compression for a backup job at all.
+ Thus a name for the new option in the director must be
+ well-defined.
+ Notes: KES I think the Storage definition should probably override what
+ is in the Job definition or vice-versa, but in any case, it must
+ be well defined.
-Item 26: Store and restore extended attributes, especially selinux file contexts
- Date: 28 December 2007
- Origin: Frank Sweetser <fs@wpi.edu>
- Status: Done
- What: The ability to store and restore extended attributes on
- filesystems that support them, such as ext3.
-
- Why: Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) enabled systems make extensive
- use of extended attributes. In addition to the standard user,
- group, and permission, each file has an associated SELinux context
- stored as an extended attribute. This context is used to define
- which operations a given program is permitted to perform on that
- file. Storing contexts on an SELinux system is as critical as
- storing ownership and permissions. In the case of a full system
- restore, the system will not even be able to boot until all
- critical system files have been properly relabeled.
-
- Notes: Fedora ships with a version of tar that has been patched to handle
- extended attributes. The patch has not been integrated upstream
- yet, so could serve as a good starting point.
-
- http://linux.die.net/man/2/getxattr
- http://linux.die.net/man/2/setxattr
- http://linux.die.net/man/2/listxattr
- ===
- http://linux.die.net/man/3/getfilecon
- http://linux.die.net/man/3/setfilecon
-
-Item 27: make changing "spooldata=yes|no" possible for
- manual/interactive jobs
- Origin: Marc Schiffbauer <marc@schiffbauer.net>
- Date: 12 April 2007)
- Status: Done
- 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:
-
- 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.
-
- Notes: ./.
-
-Item 28: Implement an option to modify the last written date for volumes
-Date: 16 September 2008
-Origin: Franck (xeoslaenor at gmail dot com)
-Status: Done
-What: The ability to modify the last written date for a volume
-Why: It's sometime necessary to jump a volume when you have a pool of volume
- which recycles the oldest volume at each backup.
- Sometime, it needs to cancel a set of backup (one day
- backup, completely) and we want to avoid that bacula
- choose the volume (which is not written at all) from
- the cancelled backup (It has to jump to next volume).
- in this case, we just need to update the written date
- manually to avoir the "oldest volume" purge.
-Notes: An option can be add to "update volume" command (like 'written date'
- choice for example)
-
-
-========= New Items since the last vote =================
-
-Item 26: Add a new directive to bacula-dir.conf which permits inclusion of all subconfiguration files in a given directory
-Date: 18 October 2008
+Item 16: 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
contain standard directives which are simply "inlined" to the parent
file as already happens when you explicitly reference an external file.
- Item n: List inChanger flag when doing restore.
- Origin: Jesper Krogh<jesper@krogh.cc>
- Date: 17 oct. 2008
- Status:
-
- What: When doing a restore the restore selection dialog ends by telling stuff
- like this:
- The job will require the following
- Volume(s) Storage(s) SD Device(s)
- ===========================================================================
- 000741L3 LTO-4 LTO3
- 000866L3 LTO-4 LTO3
- 000765L3 LTO-4 LTO3
- 000764L3 LTO-4 LTO3
- 000756L3 LTO-4 LTO3
- 001759L3 LTO-4 LTO3
- 001763L3 LTO-4 LTO3
- 001762L3 LTO-4 LTO3
- 001767L3 LTO-4 LTO3
-
- When having an autochanger, it would be really nice with an inChanger
- column so the operator knew if this restore job would stop waiting for
- operator intervention. This is done just by selecting the inChanger flag
- from the catalog and printing it in a seperate column.
-
-
- Why: This would help getting large restores through minimizing the
- time spent waiting for operator to drop by and change tapes in the library.
-
- Notes: [Kern] I think it would also be good to have the Slot as well,
- or some indication that Bacula thinks the volume is in the autochanger
- because it depends on both the InChanger flag and the Slot being
- valid.
-
+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:
-Item 1: Implement an interface between Bacula and 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.
+ #
+ # 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'"
- Why: Amazon's S3 is a cheap way to store data off-site. Current
- ways to integrate Bacula and S3 involve storing all the data
- locally and syncing them to S3, and manually fetching them
- again when they're needed. This is very cumbersome.
-
-
-Item 1: enable/disable compression depending on storage device (disk/tape)
- Origin: Ralf Gross ralf-lists@ralfgross.de
- Date: 2008-01-11
- Status: Initial Request
+ and when we get a new client, we just put its configuration into
+ a new file called something like:
- What: Add a new option to the storage resource of the director. Depending
- on this option, compression will be enabled/disabled for a device.
+ /etc/bacula/clientdefs/clientname.conf
- Why: If different devices (disks/tapes) are used for full/diff/incr
- backups, software compression will be enabled for all backups
- because of the FileSet compression option. For backup to tapes
- wich are able to do hardware compression this is not desired.
-
-
- Notes:
- http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.backup.bacula.devel/cutoff=11124
- It must be clear to the user, that the FileSet compression option
- must still be enabled use compression for a backup job at all.
- Thus a name for the new option in the director must be
- well-defined.
-
- Notes: KES I think the Storage definition should probably override what
- is in the Job definition or vice-versa, but in any case, it must
- be well defined.
+Item 17: Multiple threads in file daemon for the same job
+ Date: 27 November 2005
+ Origin: Ove Risberg (Ove.Risberg at octocode dot com)
+ Status:
-Item 1: Backup and Restore of Windows Encrypted Files through raw encryption
- functions
+ What: I want the file daemon to start multiple threads for a backup
+ job so the fastest possible backup can be made.
- Origin: Michael Mohr, SAG Mohr.External@infineon.com
-
- Date: 22 February 2008
-
- Status:
+ The file daemon could parse the FileSet information and start
+ one thread for each File entry located on a separate
+ filesystem.
- 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)
+ 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.
- 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.
+ If the theads could spool the data to separate spool files
+ the restore process will not be much slower.
- 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.
+ Why: Multiple concurrent backups of a large fileserver with many
+ disks and controllers will be much faster.
- Notes: ./.
- Item 1: Possibilty to schedule Jobs on last Friday of the month
- Origin: Carsten Menke <bootsy52 at gmx dot net>
- Date: 02 March 2008
- Status:
+Item 18: 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
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
+ 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.
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
+ 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
Run = pool=Monthly last Day of the Month at 23:50
- Date: 20 March 2008
- Origin: Frank Sweetser <fs@wpi.edu>
+Item 19: 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: 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.
+ What: The "stat clients" command doesn't include any detail on when
+ the active backup jobs were launched.
- Why: I've been bitten by this scenario a couple of times:
+ Why: Including the timestamp would make it much easier to decide whether
+ a job is running properly.
- 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!
+ 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 n?: Expand the Verify Job capability to verify Jobs older than the
- last one. For VolumeToCatalog Jobs
- Date: 17 Januar 2008
- Origin: portrix.net Hamburg, Germany.
- Contact: Christian Sabelmann
- Status: 70% of the required Code is part of the Verify function since v. 2.x
- What:
- The ability to tell Bacula which Job should verify instead of
- automatically verify just the last one.
+Item 20: Cause daemons to use a specific IP address to source communications
+ Origin: Bill Moran <wmoran@collaborativefusion.com>
+ Date: 18 Dec 2006
+ Status: Done in 3.0.2
+ 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.
- 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.
+
+Item 21: 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
+ }
+
+ Notes: Kern: This should be rather trivial to implement.
+
+
+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.
+
+ Notes: Job selection should be by Job, time, Volume, Client, Pool and possibly
+ other criteria.
+
+
+Item 23: "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" for drives when used with changer device
+ Origin: Ralf Gross ralf-lists <at> ralfgross.de
+ Date: 2008-12-12
+ Status: Done in 3.0.3
+
+ What: respect the "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" directive in the _drives_
+ Storage section in addition to the changer section
+
+ Why: I have a 3 drive changer where I want to be able to let 3 concurrent
+ jobs run in parallel. But only one job per drive at the same time.
+ Right now I don't see how I could limit the number of concurrent jobs
+ per drive in this situation.
+
+ Notes: Using different priorities for these jobs lead to problems that other
+ jobs are blocked. On the user list I got the advice to use the
+ "Prefer Mounted Volumes" directive, but Kern advised against using
+ "Prefer Mounted Volumes" in an other thread:
+ http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.backup.bacula.devel/11876/
+
+ In addition I'm not sure if this would be the same as respecting the
+ drive's "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" setting.
+
+ Example:
+
+ Storage {
+ Name = Neo4100
+ Address = ....
+ SDPort = 9103
+ Password = "wiped"
+ Device = Neo4100
+ Media Type = LTO4
+ Autochanger = yes
+ Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 3
+ }
- 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.
+ Storage {
+ Name = Neo4100-LTO4-D1
+ Address = ....
+ SDPort = 9103
+ Password = "wiped"
+ Device = ULTRIUM-TD4-D1
+ Media Type = LTO4
+ Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1
+ }
+
+ [2 more drives]
-Item X: Add EFS support on Windows
- Origin: Alex Ehrlich (Alex.Ehrlich-at-mail.ee)
- Date: 05 August 2008
- Status:
-
- What: 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: Many laptop users utilize the EFS functionality today; so do.
- some non-laptop ones, too.
- Currently files encrypted by means of EFS cannot be backed up.
- It means a Windows boutique cannot rely on Bacula as its
- backup solution, at least when using Windows 2K, XPP,
- "better" Vista etc on workstations, unless EFS is
- forbidden by policies.
- The current situation might result into "false sense of
- security" among the end-users.
-
- 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.
+ The "Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1" directive in the drive's section is
+ ignored.
+
+
+Item 24: 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 25: 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
+ would help those of us who use different storage devices for different
+ backup levels cope with the "auto-upgrade" of a backup.
- encrypted-file-related callback functions.
-========== Already implemented ================================
+ Why: Assume I add several new devices to be backed up, i.e. several
+ hosts with 1TB RAID. To avoid tape switching hassles, incrementals are
+ stored in a disk set on a 2TB RAID. If you add these devices in the
+ middle of the month, the incrementals are upgraded to "full" backups,
+ but they try to use the same storage device as requested in the
+ incremental job, filling up the RAID holding the differentials. If we
+ could override the Storage parameter for full and/or differential
+ backups, then the Full job would use the proper Storage device, which
+ has more capacity (i.e. a 8TB tape library.
-============= Empty Feature Request form ===========
-Item n: One line summary ...
- Date: Date submitted
- Origin: Name and email of originator.
+Item 26: Automatic promotion of backup levels based on backup size
+ Date: 19 January 2006
+ Origin: Adam Thornton <athornton@sinenomine.net>
Status:
- What: More detailed explanation ...
-
- Why: Why it is important ...
+ 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.
- Notes: Additional notes or features (omit if not used)
-============== End Feature Request form ==============
+ 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).
-========== Items on put hold by Kern ============================
-
-Item h1: Split documentation
- Origin: Maxx <maxxatworkat gmail dot com>
- Date: 27th July 2006
- Status: Approved, awaiting implementation
-
- 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.
-
- Notes: This is a project that needs to be done, and will be implemented,
- but it is really a developer issue of timing, and does not
- needed to be included in the voting.
-
-
-Item h2: 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.
-
- Notes: Kern: this project has a lot of merit, and we need to do it, but
- it is really an issue for developers rather than a new feature
- for users, so I have removed it from the voting list, but kept it
- here, but at some point, it will be implemented.
-
-Item h3: Filesystem watch triggered backup.
- Date: 31 August 2006
- Origin: Jesper Krogh <jesper@krogh.cc>
- Status:
- What: With inotify and similar filesystem triggeret notification
- systems is it possible to have the file-daemon to monitor
- filesystem changes and initiate backup.
+Item 27: Allow inclusion/exclusion of files in a fileset by creation/mod times
+ Origin: Evan Kaufman <evan.kaufman@gmail.com>
+ Date: January 11, 2006
+ Status:
- 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.
+ 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.
- 2) The introduced load on the system will probably be
- distributed more even on the system.
+ You could factor the Exclude=yes|no option in much the same way it
+ affects the Wild and Regex directives. For example, you could exclude
+ all files modified before a certain date:
- Notes: This can be combined with configration that specifies
- something like: "at most every 15 minutes or when changes
- consumed XX MB".
+ Options {
+ Exclude = yes
+ Modified Before = ####
+ }
-Kern Notes: I would rather see this implemented by an external program
- that monitors the Filesystem changes, then uses the console
+ Or you could exclude all files created/modified since a certain date:
+ Options {
+ Exclude = yes
+ Created Modified Since = ####
+ }
-Item h4: 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:
+ The format of the time/date could be done several ways, say the number
+ of seconds since the epoch:
+ 1137008553 = Jan 11 2006, 1:42:33PM # result of `date +%s`
- 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.
+ Or a human readable date in a cryptic form:
+ 20060111134233 = Jan 11 2006, 1:42:33PM # YYYYMMDDhhmmss
- Why: This would save lots of space when backing up large files such as
- logs, mbox files, Outlook PST files and the like.
+ Why: I imagine a feature like this could have many uses. It would
+ allow a user to do a full backup while excluding the base operating
+ system files, so if I installed a Linux snapshot from a CD yesterday,
+ I'll *exclude* all files modified *before* today. If I need to
+ recover the system, I use the CD I already have, plus the tape backup.
+ Or if, say, a Windows client is hit by a particularly corrosive
+ virus, and I need to *exclude* any files created/modified *since* the
+ time of infection.
- Notes: This would require the usage of disk-based volumes as comparing
- files would not be feasible using a tape drive.
+ Notes: Of course, this feature would work in concert with other
+ in/exclude rules, and wouldnt override them (or each other).
- Notes: Kern: I don't know how to implement this. Put on hold until someone
- provides a detailed implementation plan.
+ 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 h5: 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.
-
-Notes: Kern: I don't see the utility of this, and it would be a *huge*
- modification to existing code.
-
-Item h6: Implement NDMP protocol support
- Origin: Alan Davis
- Date: 06 March 2007
+Item 28: Archival (removal) of User Files to Tape
+ Date: Nov. 24/2005
+ Origin: Ray Pengelly [ray at biomed dot queensu dot ca
Status:
- What: Network Data Management Protocol is implemented by a number of
- NAS filer vendors to enable backups using third-party
- software.
-
- 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
+ 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.
- 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.
+ 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.
- 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.
+ 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.
-Item h7: Commercial database support
- Origin: Russell Howe <russell_howe dot wreckage dot org>
- Date: 26 July 2006
- Status:
+ 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.
- 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.
-
- Notes: This might be nice, but someone other than me will probably need to
- implement it, and at the moment, proprietary code cannot legally
- be mixed with Bacula GPLed code. This would be possible only
- providing the vendors provide GPLed (or OpenSource) interface
- code.
-
-Item h8: 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.
-
- Notes: As you indicate this is a bit of "blue sky" or in other words,
- at the moment, it is a bit esoteric to consider for Bacula.
-
-Item h9: Archive data
- Date: 15/5/2006
- Origin: calvin streeting calvin at absentdream dot com
- Status:
- What: The abilty to archive to media (dvd/cd) in a uncompressed format
- for dead filing (archiving not backing up)
-
- Why: At work 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 predefined 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
-
- Notes: Kern: I don't understand this item, and in any case, if it
- is specific to DVD/CDs, which we do not recommend using,
- it is unlikely to be implemented except as a user
- submitted patch.
-
-
-Item h10: 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.
+Item 29: An option to operate on all pools with update vol parameters
+ Origin: Dmitriy Pinchukov <absh@bossdev.kiev.ua>
+ Date: 16 August 2006
+ Status: Patch made by Nigel Stepp
- Why: In the case of clustered filesystems (SAN setups, GFS, or OCFS2, etc)
- multiple machines may have access to the same set of filesystems
+ 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.
- 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.
+ Why: I have many pools and therefore unhappy with manually
+ updating each of them using update -> Volume parameters -> All
+ Volumes from Pool -> pool #.
- 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.
- Likewise when restoring, it would be easier to just specify
- one of the cluster machines and let bacula decide which to use.
+Item 30: Automatic disabling of devices
+ Date: 2005-11-11
+ Origin: Peter Eriksson <peter at ifm.liu dot se>
+ Status:
- 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.
+ 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.
- 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.
+ Why: On a multi-drive jukebox there is a possibility of tape drives
+ going bad during large backups (needing a cleaning tape run,
+ tapes getting stuck). It would be advantageous if Bacula would
+ automatically disable further use of a problematic tape drive
+ after a configurable amount of errors has occurred.
- Notes: Kern: I don't understand the request enough to be able to
- implement it. A lot more design detail should be presented
- before voting on this project.
+ An example: I have a multi-drive jukebox (6 drives, 380+ slots)
+ where tapes occasionally get stuck inside the drive. Bacula will
+ notice that the "mtx-changer" command will fail and then fail
+ any backup jobs trying to use that drive. However, it will still
+ keep on trying to run new jobs using that drive and fail -
+ forever, and thus failing lots and lots of jobs... Since we have
+ many drives Bacula could have just automatically disabled
+ further use of that drive and used one of the other ones
+ instead.
- Feature Request Form
-Item n: Data encryption on storage daemon
- Origin: Tobias Barth <tobias.barth at web-arts.com>
- Date: 04 February 2009
- Status: new
+Item 31: List InChanger flag when doing restore.
+ Origin: Jesper Krogh<jesper@krogh.cc>
+ Date: 17 Oct 2008
+ Status: Done in version 3.0.2
- What: The storage demon should be able to do the data encryption that can currently be done by the file daemon.
+ What: When doing a restore the restore selection dialog ends by telling
+ stuff like this:
+ The job will require the following
+ Volume(s) Storage(s) SD Device(s)
+ ===========================================================================
+ 000741L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 000866L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 000765L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 000764L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 000756L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 001759L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 001763L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 001762L3 LTO-4 LTO3
+ 001767L3 LTO-4 LTO3
- Why: This would have 2 advantages: 1) one could encrypt the data of unencrypted tapes by doing a migration job, and 2) the storage daemon would be the only machine that would have to keep the encryption keys.
+ When having an autochanger, it would be really nice with an inChanger
+ column so the operator knew if this restore job would stop waiting for
+ operator intervention. This is done just by selecting the inChanger flag
+ from the catalog and printing it in a seperate column.
-Item 1: "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" for drives when used with changer device
- Origin: Ralf Gross ralf-lists <at> ralfgross.de
- Date: 2008-12-12
- Status: Initial Request
+ Why: This would help getting large restores through minimizing the
+ time spent waiting for operator to drop by and change tapes in the library.
- What: respect the "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" directive in the _drives_
- Storage section in addition to the changer section
+ Notes: [Kern] I think it would also be good to have the Slot as well,
+ or some indication that Bacula thinks the volume is in the autochanger
+ because it depends on both the InChanger flag and the Slot being
+ valid.
- Why: I have a 3 drive changer where I want to be able to let 3 concurrent
- jobs run in parallel. But only one job per drive at the same time.
- Right now I don't see how I could limit the number of concurrent jobs
- per drive in this situation.
- Notes: Using different priorities for these jobs lead to problems that other
- jobs are blocked. On the user list I got the advice to use the "Prefer Mounted
- Volumes" directive, but Kern advised against using "Prefer Mounted
- Volumes" in an other thread:
- http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.backup.bacula.devel/11876/
+Item 32: Ability to defer Batch Insert to a later time
+ Date: 26 April 2009
+ Origin: Eric
+ Status:
- In addition I'm not sure if this would be the same as respecting the
- drive's "Maximum Concurrent Jobs" setting.
+ 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:
+ Why: Permits to focus on getting the data on the Volume and
+ putting the metadata into the Catalog outside the backup
+ window.
- Storage {
- Name = Neo4100
- Address = ....
- SDPort = 9103
- Password = "wiped"
- Device = Neo4100
- Media Type = LTO4
- Autochanger = yes
- Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 3
- }
-
- Storage {
- Name = Neo4100-LTO4-D1
- Address = ....
- SDPort = 9103
- Password = "wiped"
- Device = ULTRIUM-TD4-D1
- Media Type = LTO4
- Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1
- }
-
- [2 more drives]
+ Notes: Will use the proposed Bacula ASCII database import/export
+ format (i.e. dependent on the import/export entities project).
- The "Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1" directive in the drive's section is ignored.
- Item n: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes statement to Storage resource
+Item 33: Add MaxVolumeSize/MaxVolumeBytes statement to Storage resource
Origin: Bastian Friedrich <bastian.friedrich@collax.com>
- Date: 2008-07-09
+ Date: 2008-07-09
Status: -
- What: SD has a "Maximum Volume Size" statement, which is deprecated
- and superseded by the Pool resource statement "Maximum Volume Bytes". It
- would be good if either statement could be used in Storage resources.
+ What: SD has a "Maximum Volume Size" statement, which is deprecated and
+ superseded by the Pool resource statement "Maximum Volume Bytes".
+ It would be good if either statement could be used in Storage
+ resources.
- Why: Pools do not have to be restricted to a single storage
- type/device; thus, it may be impossible to define Maximum Volume Bytes in
- the Pool resource. The old MaxVolSize statement is deprecated, as it is
- SD side only.
- I am using the same pool for different devices.
+ Why: Pools do not have to be restricted to a single storage type/device;
+ thus, it may be impossible to define Maximum Volume Bytes in the
+ Pool resource. The old MaxVolSize statement is deprecated, as it
+ is SD side only. I am using the same pool for different devices.
- Notes: State of idea currently unknown. Storage resources in the dir
- config currently translate to very slim catalog entries; these entries
- would require extensions to implement what is described here. Quite
- possibly, numerous other statements that are currently available in Pool
- resources could be used in Storage resources too quite well.
+ 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 1: Start spooling even when waiting on tape
- Origin: Tobias Barth <tobias.barth@web-arts.com>
- Date: 25 April 2008
- Status:
-
- What: If a job can be spooled to disk before writing it to tape, it
-should be spooled immediately.
- Currently, bacula waits until the correct tape is inserted
-into the drive.
-
- Why: It could save hours. When bacula waits on the operator who
-must insert the correct tape (e.g. a new
- tape or a tape from another media pool), bacula could already
-prepare the spooled data in the
- spooling directory and immediately start despooling when the
-tape was inserted by the operator.
-
- 2nd step: Use 2 or more spooling directories. When one directory is
-currently despooling, the next (on different
- disk drives) could already be spooling the next data.
- Notes: I am using bacula 2.2.8, which has none of those features
-implemented.
-
-Item 1: enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries
-
- Date: 24 Jan, 2007
+Item 34: Enable persistent naming/number of SQL queries
+ Date: 24 Jan, 2007
Origin: Mark Bergman
Status:
- What:
+ 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:
+ 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
than by number.
+Item 35: Port bat to Win32
+ Date: 26 April 2009
+ Origin: Kern/Eric
+ Status:
+
+ What: Make bat run on Win32/64.
+
+ Why: To have GUI on Windows
+
+ Notes:
+
+
+Item 36: 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 37: 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 38: Backup and Restore of Windows Encrypted Files using Win raw encryption
+ Origin: Michael Mohr, SAG Mohr.External@infineon.com
+ Date: 22 February 2008
+ Origin: Alex Ehrlich (Alex.Ehrlich-at-mail.ee)
+ Date: 05 August 2008
+ Status:
+
+ What: Make it possible to backup and restore Encypted Files from and to
+ Windows systems without the need to decrypt it by using the raw
+ encryption functions API (see:
+ http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363783.aspx)
+ that is provided for that reason by Microsoft.
+ If a file ist encrypted could be examined by evaluating the
+ FILE_ATTRIBUTE_ENCRYTED flag of the GetFileAttributes
+ function.
+ For each file backed up or restored by FD on Windows, check if
+ the file is encrypted; if so then use OpenEncryptedFileRaw,
+ ReadEncryptedFileRaw, WriteEncryptedFileRaw,
+ CloseEncryptedFileRaw instead of BackupRead and BackupWrite
+ API calls.
+
+ Why: Without the usage of this interface the fd-daemon running
+ under the system account can't read encypted Files because
+ the key needed for the decrytion is missed by them. As a result
+ actually encrypted files are not backed up
+ by bacula and also no error is shown while missing these files.
+
+ Notes: Using xxxEncryptedFileRaw API would allow to backup and
+ restore EFS-encrypted files without decrypting their data.
+ Note that such files cannot be restored "portably" (at least,
+ easily) but they would be restoreable to a different (or
+ reinstalled) Win32 machine; the restore would require setup
+ of a EFS recovery agent in advance, of course, and this shall
+ be clearly reflected in the documentation, but this is the
+ normal Windows SysAdmin's business.
+ When "portable" backup is requested the EFS-encrypted files
+ shall be clearly reported as errors.
+ See MSDN on the "Backup and Restore of Encrypted Files" topic:
+ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363783.aspx
+ Maybe the EFS support requires a new flag in the database for
+ each file, too?
+ Unfortunately, the implementation is not as straightforward as
+ 1-to-1 replacement of BackupRead with ReadEncryptedFileRaw,
+ requiring some FD code rewrite to work with
+ encrypted-file-related callback functions.
+
+
+Item 39: Implement an interface between Bacula and Storage clould 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 Bacula existing 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).
+
+
+
+========= End items voted on May 2009 ==================
+
+========= New items after last vote ====================
+
+Item 1: Relabel disk volume after recycling
+ Origin: Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@iki.fi>
+ Date: 07 May 2009.
+ Status: Not implemented yet, no code written.
+
+ What: The ability to relabel the disk volume (and thus rename the file on the
+ disk) after it has been recycled. Useful when you have a single job
+ per disk volume, and you use a custom Label format, for example:
+ Label Format =
+ "${Client}-${Level}-${NumVols:p/4/0/r}-${Year}_${Month}_${Day}-${Hour}_${Minute}"
+
+ Why: Disk volumes in Bacula get the label/filename when they are used for the
+ first time. If you use recycling and custom label format like above,
+ the disk volume name doesn't match the contents after it has been
+ recycled. This feature makes it possible to keep the label/filename
+ in sync with the content and thus makes it easy to check/monitor the
+ backups from the shell and/or normal file management tools, because
+ the filenames of the disk volumes match the content.
+
+ Notes: The configuration option could be "Relabel after Recycling = Yes".
+
+Item n: 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 n: 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 n: 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:
+
+ 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 n: 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 n: Concurrent spooling and despooling withini 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 1: Extend the verify code to make it possible to verify
+ older jobs, not only the last one that has finished
+ Date: 10 April 2009
+ Origin: Ralf Gross (Ralf-Lists <at> ralfgross.de)
+ Status: not implemented or documented
+
+ What: At the moment a VolumeToCatalog job compares only the
+ last job with the data in the catalog. It's not possible
+ to compare the data (md5sums) of an older volume with the
+ data in the catalog.
+
+ Why: If a verify job fails, one has to immediately check the
+ source of the problem, fix it and rerun the verify job.
+ This has to happen before the next backup of the
+ verified backup job starts.
+ More important: It's not possible to check jobs that are
+ kept for a long time (archiv). If a jobid could be
+ specified for a verify job, older backups/tapes could be
+ checked on a regular base.
+
+ Notes: verify documentation:
+ VolumeToCatalog: This level causes Bacula to read the file
+ attribute data written to the Volume from the last Job [...]
+
+ Verify Job = <Job-Resource-Name> If you run a verify job
+ without this directive, the last job run will be compared
+ with the catalog, which means that you must immediately
+ follow a backup by a verify command. If you specify a Verify
+ Job Bacula will find the last job with that name that ran [...]
+
+ example bconsole verify dialog:
+
+ Run Verify job
+ JobName: VerifyServerXXX
+ Level: VolumeToCatalog
+ Client: ServerXXX-fd
+ FileSet: ServerXXX-Vol1
+ Pool: Full (From Job resource)
+ Storage: Neo4100 (From Pool resource)
+ Verify Job: ServerXXX-Vol1
+ Verify List:
+ When: 2009-04-20 09:03:04
+ Priority: 10
+ OK to run? (yes/mod/no): m
+ Parameters to modify:
+ 1: Level
+ 2: Storage
+ 3: Job
+ 4: FileSet
+ 5: Client
+ 6: When
+ 7: Priority
+ 8: Pool
+ 9: Verify Job
+
+
+
+Item n: 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
+ }
+
+ Device {
+ Name = name_of_device
+ Storage = name_of_server
+ Device = name_of_device_on_sd
+ Media Type = media_type
+ Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1
+ }
+
+ Maximum Concurrent Jobs would be specified with a server and a device
+ maximum, which would both be honoured by the director. Almost everything
+ that mentions a 'Storage' would need to be changed to 'Device', although
+ perhaps a 'Storage' would just be a synonym for 'Device' for backwards
+ compatibility...
+
+ Why: If you have multiple Storage definitions pointing to different
+ Devices in the same Storage daemon, the "status storage" command
+ prompts for each different device, but they all give the same
+ information.
+
+ Notes:
+
+
+
+========= Add new items above this line =================
+
+
+============= Empty Feature Request form ===========
+Item n: One line summary ...
+ Date: Date submitted
+ Origin: Name and email of originator.
+ Status:
+
+ What: More detailed explanation ...
+
+ Why: Why it is important ...
+
+ Notes: Additional notes or features (omit if not used)
+============== End Feature Request form ==============
+
+========== Items put on hold by Kern ============================
projects / bacula / bacula / blobdiff