[Bacula-users] New User: Usability questions
Hi, I am considering using bacula for my laboratory data backups. A few questions on whether it will work with my hardware, and regarding a few features: 1.Will my hardware work w/ bacula? Tape DriveCybernetics CY-8102 AIT2 8 mm tape drive, 50/150 GB, *** iSCSI *** System Linux Redhat EL4, 2.6. kernel 2. How fast can bacula find a file on a tape to restore (i.e., does it fast-forward to the right spot on the tape, or does it read through at the regular [slow] read/write speed)? Can it restore a file from the end of the tape in a few minutes, instead of hours? 3. How are files written onto tape? Like (multiple) tar files, w/ filemarks. Or some other sort of format? In other words, can a bacula-written tape be recovered w/ tar (or some other standard, simple Linux utility) if needed? I had purchased and was planning to use Cybernetics Accelerated File Access (CYAFA) software, which I had used before and had liked. Simple but fast. And, CYAFA can fast-forward to the end of a tape, if that's where the file that you want to restore is located, in one or two minutes (!), unlike tar, which would take hours. However, it turns out that CYAFA does not work with iSCSI, only direct SCSI. So, I have a choice of getting different software (bacula certainly looks very nice!), or swapping the tape drive out for a regular SCSI version (to Cybernetics credit, they'll do it for free) and then using CYAFA. Thanks for answers and advice, Dave David W. Borhani, Ph.D. Structural Biology Group Leader Chemistry Department Abbott Bioresearch Center Vox: 508-688-3944 Fax: 508-754-7784 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Smail: Abbott Bioresearch Center, Inc. 100 Research Drive Worcester, MA 01605 U.S.A. http://abbott.com - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] New User: Usability questions
On 15 Nov 2006 at 14:49, David W Borhani wrote: Hi, I am considering using bacula for my laboratory data backups. A few questions on whether it will work with my hardware, and regarding a few features: 1.Will my hardware work w/ bacula? Tape Drive Cybernetics CY-8102 AIT2 8 mm tape drive, 50/150 GB, *** iSCSI *** System Linux Redhat EL4, 2.6. kernel I have no idea. :) 2. How fast can bacula find a file on a tape to restore (i.e., does it fast-forward to the right spot on the tape, or does it read through at the regular [slow] read/write speed)? Can it restore a file from the end of the tape in a few minutes, instead of hours? Bacula can fast-forward, if your OS/Tape drive allow it. Adjust your bacula-dir.conf file during the tape testing stage to get this behaviour. 3. How are files written onto tape? Like (multiple) tar files, w/ filemarks. Or some other sort of format? In other words, can a bacula-written tape be recovered w/ tar (or some other standard, simple Linux utility) if needed? Yes to the last question. See bls and bextract. -- Dan Langille : Software Developer looking for work my resume: http://www.freebsddiary.org/dan_langille.php - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] New User: Usability questions
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 David W Borhani wrote: Hi, I am considering using bacula for my laboratory data backups. A few questions on whether it will work with my hardware, and regarding a few features: 1.Will my hardware work w/ bacula? Tape DriveCybernetics CY-8102 AIT2 8 mm tape drive, 50/150 GB, *** iSCSI *** SystemLinux Redhat EL4, 2.6. kernel Normally, if a drive works in Linux (as SCSI drive) it also works with Bacula. See the tape testing section in the manual ( http://www.bacula.org/dev-manual/Testing_Your_Tape_Drive.html#_ChapterStart27 ) if you want to make sure. Maybe somebody else on the list has already tried it with an iSCSI drive? 2. How fast can bacula find a file on a tape to restore (i.e., does it fast-forward to the right spot on the tape, or does it read through at the regular [slow] read/write speed)? Can it restore a file from the end of the tape in a few minutes, instead of hours? If the drive supports it, Bacula puts regular filemarks onto the tape, allowing it to fast forward to the 'chunk' that contains the file. 3. How are files written onto tape? Like (multiple) tar files, w/ filemarks. Or some other sort of format? In other words, can a bacula-written tape be recovered w/ tar (or some other standard, simple Linux utility) if needed? No. Bacula does not use tar, it has its own data format. You can create a rescue CD allowing you to perform bare-metal restores of a crashed director (with that you'll be able to restore the rest). Bacula also has tools to rebuild the catalog data from the tapes (bscan) and restore data (bextract). Hope that's helpful and that I got everything together correctly. Greetings, Michel -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (MingW32) - GPGrelay v0.959 iD8DBQFFW3TT2Vs+MkscAyURAk+rAKD2hIEJ1J7CUkfGMp7wNQwH44hS4QCgiri+ rydAkP91aBWoh7UcoF+U2lI= =rKrF -END PGP SIGNATURE- - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
Re: [Bacula-users] New User: Usability questions
Hi, On 11/15/2006 8:58 PM, Dan Langille wrote: On 15 Nov 2006 at 14:49, David W Borhani wrote: Hi, I am considering using bacula for my laboratory data backups. A few questions on whether it will work with my hardware, and regarding a few features: 1.Will my hardware work w/ bacula? Tape Drive Cybernetics CY-8102 AIT2 8 mm tape drive, 50/150 GB, *** iSCSI *** System Linux Redhat EL4, 2.6. kernel I have no idea. :) It should work as long as you use the standard devices to access the tape drive, i.e. /dev/nst0 for the tape drive. Using the capabilities like fast seeking should work, too, but if it does I don't understand why the manufacturers own software can't do it. 2. How fast can bacula find a file on a tape to restore (i.e., does it fast-forward to the right spot on the tape, or does it read through at the regular [slow] read/write speed)? Can it restore a file from the end of the tape in a few minutes, instead of hours? Bacula can fast-forward, if your OS/Tape drive allow it. Adjust your bacula-dir.conf file during the tape testing stage to get this behaviour. Better advust the bacula-sd.conf file :-) By the way, it's not really very time consuming to download the bacula source (or rpm for your platform), install bacula, set up the SD and run the tests you'll run anyway once you decide to give it a try. Testing the tape drive does not require a full Bacula setup with catalog database, jobs, and schedules. 3. How are files written onto tape? Like (multiple) tar files, w/ filemarks. Or some other sort of format? In other words, can a bacula-written tape be recovered w/ tar (or some other standard, simple Linux utility) if needed? Yes to the last question. See bls and bextract. Of course, bls and bextract are not exactly standard unix utilities. But then, tar isn't, too, unless you use the right version with the correct options... I would even go so far to say that Bacula tape format is better portable than a tar archive. For tar, you'd need to know lots of details - which tar (gnu, posix, certain unix flavor), which options, which version. This happens, of course, once you need to read a tar archive after the last machine with insert unix flavor here died and you really need the data... Arno -- IT-Service Lehmann[EMAIL PROTECTED] Arno Lehmann http://www.its-lehmann.de - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
