Hello everybody, we've been discussing this for the last couple of days here in the office, just figured I'd spill it out for you 'fore I actually post it as a feature request (maybe I should wait for 3.0 to be released in order to keep to the code "The best time to submit a Feature Request is just after a release when I officially request feature requests for the next version." as it says on the website :) ).
Anyways, just play with me here, this is what we see as a possible enrichment to Bacula: Say you have a bunch of computers to be backed up. They're all running the same operating system and are setup somehow coherent. In that case it's just as easy as it gets, define one fileset and use it for every client. However in a more heterogeneous environment things are a bit more tricky. Say you have not just a bunch, but a whole lot of computers running different operating systems. You have X machines running UltraCoolOS Platinum Edition, Y machines running OuterSpaceDows and even a few more exotic ones such as KickButtOs or whatever (X and Y representing "large enough" integer numbers, as for the OS-names...just having a little fun here, play with me :) ). Each OS itself has a way of organizing its files, whether their system critical files or user files. Each box runs different services which again result in even more mixed up file system hierarchies, but still they're based on a common starting point. Would there be a way to define a common filesystem template (or in bacula terminology: a filesystem definition) and derive client filesets from there? Of course the above mentioned scenario could easily be resolved with separate filesets for each client, but each UltraCoolOS Platinum Edition would have a fileset starting at the same point and would include all but a few folders each time it is defined. The same would be relevant for OuterSpaceDows, KickBussOs and whatever else there is. What we're thinking is that with some sort of a template one could resolve that matter a bit more elegant. We are aware of the @-include feature which allows us to include file-snippets anywhere within the Bacula configuration files and make heavy use of it but I'm that would result in some ugly Sunday morning hack in order to avoid duplicate names and such. One thing that cannot be handled via a single fileset or even "include-hell" would be the fact that whenever you change a fileset the next backup will be promoted to a full backup. So if you were to use a fileset with a large number of clients and at some point notice that you have to change a small aspect just to reflect changes on very few of the clients you'd most likely end up running full backups of every client associated with the fileset, instead of just the ones that basically cause the change in the first place. Hope I could somewhat fill you in on our idea. Just a few thoughts from us. Opinions welcome, maybe we are just approaching this entirely wrong. However the environment here looks somewhat like the scenario described above. We run plenty of Windows Server boxes, Solaris and Linux, and for the exotic part AIX and HP-UX. The Windows boxes being setup similarily usually require C: and a bunch of important directories to be backed up as well as database folders, webserver content folders and the likes. Best regards Ronald ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
