On 12/23/24 15:13, D. wrote:
Is there any documentation on how to use USB-attached external hard
drives in place of tapes? If yes, where can I find the documentation?
I would like to rotate the external drives for off-line off-site backups
just like traditional tapes.
Any guidance on this subject is greatly appreciated.
I'm using a SAS-attached removable zpool, but the fundamental principle
for removable disk is the same regardless of the underlying technology.
There's multiple ways to do it, I'm sure. This is the way I do it.
My SD has two Storage Devices, one internal (actually still hot-swap)
and one external/removable that gets swapped out after each full backup
cycle:
Device {
Name = FileStorage
Device Type = File
Media Type = File
Archive Device = /bpool/bacula
LabelMedia = yes
Random Access = Yes
AutomaticMount = yes
RemovableMedia = no
Requires Mount = no
AlwaysOpen = no
Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 20
}
Device {
Name = ArchiveCopy
Device Type = File
Media Type = File
Archive Device = /arcpool
LabelMedia = yes
Random Access = Yes
AutomaticMount = yes
RemovableMedia = no
Requires Mount = no
AlwaysOpen = no
Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 20
}
You'll notice these look EXACTLY THE SAME. The first is the internal
pool, which is a ZFS zpool comprising six 2TB SSDs in RAIDZ. The second
is the removable pool, a second ZFS zpool of four 2TB hot-swap hard
disks also in RAIDZ.
Bacula *doesn't care about that* and never has to care. All it cares
about is that when it goes to run Full backups in the FileStorage pool,
then Copy the full backups to the ArchiveCopy pool, *there is a volume
mounted at that mountpoint*. I actually have four sets of disks for
arcpool, which I use in rotation, and Bacula neither knows that nor cares.
The Pools on this storage are defined like this:
Pool {
Name = Full-Disk
Storage = epsilon3-file
Next Pool = Full-Archive
Pool Type = Backup
Recycle = no
Recycle Oldest Volume = no
Recycle Current Volume = no
AutoPrune = yes # Prune expired volumes
Volume Retention = 6 months
File Retention = 6 months
Maximum Volume Jobs = 0
Volume Use Duration = 23h
Label Format =
"FULL-$Year${Month:p/2/0/r}${Day:p/2/0/r}-${Hour:p/2/0/r}:${Minute:p/2/0/r}"
RecyclePool = Scratch
}
Pool {
Name = Full-Archive
Storage = epsilon3-archive
Pool Type = Backup
Recycle = no
Recycle Oldest Volume = no
Recycle Current Volume = no
AutoPrune = yes # Prune expired volumes
Volume Retention = 6 months
File Retention = 6 months
Maximum Volume Jobs = 0
Volume Use Duration = 23h
Label Format =
"ARCHIVE-$Year${Month:p/2/0/r}${Day:p/2/0/r}-${Hour:p/2/0/r}:${Minute:p/2/0/r}"
RecyclePool = Scratch
}
The removable pool, Archive, is defined exactly the same way, same
expiration, same EVERYTHING as the Full-Disk pool EXCEPT that it uses
the other device and has a different Label prefix.
So if a previously used volume is not present on the removable drives at
any given time, again, Bacula doesn't care, because it's never going to
try to re-use a Volume anyway. It creates new Volumes, uses them
writeable for 23 hours, then marks them Used and creates new ones for
the next set of jobs. When each volume expires, it is recycled into the
scratch pool, then a separate admin job goes through the scratch pool
and deletes every Volume it finds in it.
This is a different hardware implementation than yours, but the same
principle should work equally well with a single USB3 removable device.
All *you* have to make sure of is that there is always a device mounted
at that mountpoint when Bacula comes to write to it, and that you
manually delete any expired volumes off the device when you mount it.
(Because if that *device* was unmounted at the time that Bacula expired
the volumes stores on it, Bacula doesn't know about them any more and
doesn't know to delete them before it starts writing to the device.)
I probably COULD create an admin job to delete any expired volumes
present on the storage device before starting to use it, but honestly
I've never bothered, since I have to physically load the drives into the
external chassis and manually import the zpool anyway.
--
Phil Stracchino
Fenian House Publishing
ph...@caerllewys.net
p...@co.ordinate.org
Landline: +1.603.293.8485
Mobile: +1.603.998.6958
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