Backup to tape, but always keep a Full Backup on disk?

[Michael Stum]

I have implemented a backup that does Full, Differential, and Incremental backups to tape, and all that is working.

However, I would like to always keep a Full Backup of each client around on disk. And not just the last Full backup, but a VirtualFull that gets updated with every Differential and Incremental backup as well.

I looked at copy jobs, but if I understand this correctly, I can't copy an Incremental to a VirtualFull backup? I know I could backup each client twice a day, once to tape with Full/Incr/Diff and once to disk with VirtualFull, but that seems like a waste.

One option that I can see is to forgo the idea of VirtualFull and have Copy jobs that copy each Full/Diff/Incr backup and set retention policies to be short enough to only keep the last Full + any Incr/Diff backups since then around.

Is that the proper way, or is there some mechanism? (Basically, trying to do hot and cold backups)

Thanks,
Michael

[Douglas K. Rand]

I'm not sure that there is a proper way to do this. Just a way that works for you.

What we do is kind of the opposite of what you are asking. :) Our normal
backups are stored on disk, and then we do a virtual full backup to tape. We
used to do a full/differential/incremental backup scheme, but have since
switched to always-incremental. But I don't think that matters for this.

For us the on-disk backups are what we use all the time, but the tapes (stored
off-site) are for the Oh Shit! moments.

I don't see why you couldn't reverse that, and build on-disk virtual full
backups from the tapes. But I'd think that having to read all of the backups
(most recent full, most recent differential, and all incrementals since the
last differential) would be expensive from tape.

Here is an outline of our offsite virtual full job defs:

job defs {
name = "offsite"
type = backup
level = virtual full
schedule = "offsite"
# Gotta turn "virtual full" jobs into Archive jobs so we don't
# try to use the backup for the next "virtual full" job.
run script {
console = "update jobid=%i jobtype=A"
runs when = After
runs on client = No
}
file set = "standard"
accurate = yes
messages = "standard"
write bootstrap = "/var/db/bareos/bootstrap/%n.%i.bsr"
pool = "full"
full backup pool = "full"
differential backup pool = "differential"
incremental backup pool = "incremental"
spool attributes = yes
spool data = yes
next pool = "offsite"
}

You won't want the "spool data = yes" part if you are building the virtual
full backup on disk.

[Michael Stum]

Thank you!

I've done some more digging with this, and it seems that doing a backup to disk is saner for my scenario.

For now, I've setup an Always Incremental backup with the Tape Drive as the long-term storage, and will look into the VirtualFull solution (which seems to require a different job per actual backup job).

Michael

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[Douglas K. Rand]

On 2/6/19 11:29 AM, 'Michael Stum' via bareos-users wrote:
> I've done some more digging with this, and it seems that doing a backup
> to disk is saner for my scenario.

We do really love always incremental jobs. They are exceptionally light
on the clients. The consolidation jobs can be large, but they only run
on the backup server, they don't involve the clients at all.

> For now, I've setup an Always Incremental backup with the Tape Drive as
> the long-term storage, and will look into the VirtualFull solution
> (which seems to require a different job per actual backup job).

Yup, the virtual fulls are separate jobs. We run always incrementals
against our clients between 1 and 4 times a day, depending on the client.

And then we do the tape backups via virtual full jobs once a week. Those
tapes, for us, go off-site. Our backup server is the only thing involved
with the virtual full jobs, which is nice.