Data Backup with Bacula

Bacula is a useful network based backup program. It helps you manage data

backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across a network of

computers. Bacula offers many advanced storage management features that make it

easy to find and recover lost or damaged files. It can also run entirely on a

single computer and can backup data from both tape and disk. Generally, Bacula

is installed on a network and the server where the Bacula Director is installed

is in charge of scheduling and managing the frequency and type of backup for all

the volumes or disks connected across the network.

Bacula might score over other backup solutions as it can essentially take a

backup over a cross platform range of systems. This essentially means that

Bacula when installed on an Open Source system can be used for backup from Open

Source as well as Windows or other platforms. Bacula requires a database for its

functioning. Most systems would best suit the latest build of MySQL. Other

databases which Bacula supports include PostgreSQL and SQLite. The choice of

these databases is entirely personal or requirement/operating system driven.

Features Overview



We used Bacula version 5.0 , the latest build for our exploits. The three

major services Bacula uses are the Storage Director (bacula-sd), the File

Director (bacula-fd) and the Bacula Director itself (bacula-dir). Bacula is made

up of the following five major components or services: Director, Console, File,

Storage, and Monitor services. The Bacula Director service supervises all the

backup, restore, verify and archive operations. The Bacula Console service

allows the administrator or user to communicate with the Bacula Director.

Currently, Bacula Console is available in three versions: text-based console

interface, GNOME-based interface, and a wxWidgets graphical interface.

The Bacula Client. Provide the username, password of the Bacula Director and the IP Address of the machine housing the director.

The Bacula File service (also known as the Client program) is installed on

the machine to be backed up. The Bacula Storage services consist of the software

programs that perform the storage and recovery of the file attributes and data

to the physical backup media or volumes.

Bacula 5.0 has certain new features. These include maximum concurrent jobs

for devices, restoring from multiple Storage Daemons and file de-duplication

using base jobs. The Bacula Admin Console or BAT has also been provided with new

functionality which makes it easier to use. Media list view, Media information

view, Job information view are some of these newer features.

The Installation



Bacula can be installed on any GNU/Linux based system, Solaris or Open Solaris
system. We generally install the Bacula Director on a Linux machine, and we

installed it on CentOS 5.4. Bacula is installed with the help of multiple

packages that contain the Bacula components. To install it, go to the terminal

prompt of CentOS and enter commands in the following order:

yum install gcc gcc-c++ autoconf automake mysql mysql-server mysql-devel



tar -zxvf bacula-5.0.0.tar.gz


cd bacula


./configure --with-mysql


make all


make install


bacula


vim /etc/bacula/bacula-dir.conf

The C++ compiler is now installed, which is a pre-requisite for the MySQL

installation. We have installed and configured MySQL, the database required for

the proper functioning of Bacula. The Bacula Director should now be up and ready

to provide service. We can now edit the information in the bacula-dir.conf file

with the help of an editor or on the terminal itself.

A list of the backup jobs, their schedule and their current state can be viewed through the Bacula Admin Tool.

This information i.e name of the director and the password are to be

remembered. These would be required at the time of configuring the Bacula client

also known as the Bacula Admin Tool (Bat).

Installing Bacula on the client



The Bacula client may be installed on the client machine. We installed the

Bacula Client on our test network comprising of a mix of Open Source and Windows

platform machines. In the process of installing the Bacula Client on the client

systems on the network, the installer would ask for the Director username,

password and the address( IP Address)of the Director hosting system. The

username and password would be the same values as configured in the

bacula-dir.conf file while working on the director computer.

When Bacula Client is successfully installed on the client computer, we need

to connect this client to the Bacula Director. This can be done just by setting

the bconsole application in motion.The connection process is an automated

process taken care of by the director system itself.

Now, on the Director side, the Bacula Director needs to be informed of the

connected drives which would be present for backup. This is done by adding the

clients onto this director. Once that is done, we now move towards setting up

the Jobs.

The Jobs can be scheduled as per preference i.e when and what kind off backup

is required from that particular hard disk. Mostly, Backups from this kind of a

setup are made onto the tape drives. But newer versions of the Bacula services

include a Backup of the file systems as well.

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