On 5/3/2013 1:37 PM, Dimitri Maziuk wrote: > On 05/03/2013 10:04 AM, Radosław Korzeniewski wrote: > >>> I have a storage server with 12 SATA drives on an HBA. I want to backup >>> to those drives, using file volumes of 50GB or less. The idea is to >>> manually swap the drives as they get full. >>> >> Drop this idea. If you need to move your backups out of datacenter then buy >> a tape library. > We've used tape libraries for quite some time. By now we have ~20 years > of good reasons to want to throw them out and never ever touch one again. > >> Why not to use LVM or RAID to use all available hard disk space (12 x sata) >> for backups? Believe me, it is simpler to create a single filesystem for >> backups then use vchanger script (it is overcomplicated and IMVHO useless). > Yes, and in a place that doesn't have 10 years retention policy I have a > 36-drive box that's set up exactly like that. Unfortunately this > installation comes with different requirements.
Yes, it depends on the requirements. Vchanger was designed for removable disk drives, primarily to allow rotating removable drives offsite. Of course, nothing prevents using both in a disk-to-disk-tape scenario, only replacing the tape with a vchanger autochanger. Normal backup jobs write to volumes on a single filesystem on LVM, and then migration jobs later migrate those volumes to removable drives using vchanger for offsite/long term storage. Then rotate the removable drives according to your needs and taking into account the expected lifetime of the removable drives. > > I'll give it a few more days before I bite the bullet, but so far > vchanger looks like the least bad option. Despite being the "moving > symlink" "solution" that always felt very icky to me and being > overcomplicated at that. > > Ideally one should be able to specify multiple Device's in the Storage > and have bacula write to them in turn until all get full. A couple of > extra "for" loops and another list is basically all it takes to support > that, so I'm slightly surprised it's not there already. Well, I think it is quite a bit more complicated than that. Bacula is designed with a tape paradigm. With tape drives, the device doesn't change. but rather another volume is swapped into the same device. So, Bacula does device assignment one time when the job is started. The reason is because Bacula is multi-threaded and it is the simplest way to avoid race conditions caused by device contention. What you are considering would require a new device assignment each time a new volume is needed. While possible, it is way more complex that it appears at first glance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Get 100% visibility into Java/.NET code with AppDynamics Lite It's a free troubleshooting tool designed for production Get down to code-level detail for bottlenecks, with <2% overhead. Download for free and get started troubleshooting in minutes. http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_ap2 _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
