LTO capacity management

[Alexander Horner]

Good evening,

I am looking at Bareos as it seems to be the only option that explicitly mentions the use of LTO for incremental backups, so I can keep appending to existing tapes with each backup. Is this indeed how Bareos will work?

I am using LTO-5 tapes which have some age and use to them, and will not necessarily reach the full 1.5TB raw capacity. Is Bareos capable of handling these tapes and filling them as much as possible before requesting an additional tape be added?

Thanks

[Spadajspadaj]

As far as I remember unless you explicitly specify volume size (which can be useful if you're using file-based volumes, bareos will write to the volume until it reaches the end. Then it will request another volume.

Unless you hit an error - then I think the volume status will be set to error.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "bareos-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to bareos-users...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bareos-users/73e94304-240a-454f-99b1-757c85f91a15n%40googlegroups.com.

[Alexander Horner]

Hi there, thanks for the response,

In the case that a volume fails whilst adding it, is it possible to retry a backup with a new volume?

[Go Away]

If the writing fails the backup job will end with either failed status or "with errors". I'm not sure but I'd expect the former.

You can of course always re-run any job manually but I don't recall any mechanics like "if the job failed, re-try it immediately with another volume". You could try to script it though using your favourite scripting language.

MK

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bareos-users/ff721ede-d6b8-4d20-a248-220c235c76e3n%40googlegroups.com.

[Bruno Friedmann (bruno-at-bareos)]

You certainly will get more gain to spend a bit of time in the documentation, than trying to play with scripting :-)

Bareos has parameter to most (if not all) possible case https://docs.bareos.org/bareos-23/Configuration/Director.html#config-Dir_Job_RescheduleOnError 

;-)

Alexander, if a tape is in error, the volume will be place in state error. if the tape simply can't write more data, this is similar to end of tape, so bareos will just switch to another tape.

If you fear that maybe the job will not finish, but take long time, you may be interested in the checkpoint feature, which will allow you to use a job in error for restores.

https://docs.bareos.org/bareos-23/Appendix/Checkpoints.html#checkpoints

Regards

[Spadajspadaj]

Ha!

Another set of eyes is always useful.

Thanks for correcting my (false, this time) assumptions!

MK

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bareos-users/15313364-a4dc-468b-8488-4f4b512cdf79n%40googlegroups.com.

[Alexander Horner]

Thanks MK, Bruno,

"Checkpoints also happen on volume changes. This means that when a volume is full, or the backup has to switch to writing to another volume for some other reason, a checkpoint is triggered saving what has been written to that volume."

This sounds like what I want to achieve, so I will want to enable this.

"Based on the Checkpoints Feature, a resume of cancelled or broken Backupjobs is conceivable in the future"

A bit of a pain that one cannot yet resume a job which has failed from the point at which the checkpoint was created... Presumably this means a full new backup will need to be taken across all tapes. If this happened in the middle of a tape I would understand, as trying to get back to the correct position on the same tape could be a pain, but if it happens when adding a new tape (such as the new tape being bad overall and failing immediately) this could be a bit of a pain.

Thanks

[Bruno Friedmann (bruno-at-bareos)]

As said previously, if the volume is defective, the job try to use another one. But in some cases the drive can be defective, become unresponsive or whatever and the job finish with a job status error.

btw Bareos knows where it was on tape ;-)