New Features Planned for Bareos 24 Release!

[Aleksei Grigorev]

Dear Bareos Users,

We are happy to present some exciting updates about our upcoming Bareos 24 release, planned for November 2024. Our team has been working hard to bring you new features and improvements that will enhance your backup and storage management experience. Here’s what you can look forward to:

Dedupable Storage Backend
A new storage backend will store backup data in a format optimized for deduplication. This allows Bareos volumes to be deduplicated by storage solutions and filesystems that support deduplication (like ZFS, VDO, btrfs, etc.). The new 'bdedupestimate' command-line tool can estimate the deduplication potential of existing volumes, helping users optimize storage use.

Python Plugin in Separate Process
Bareos supports plugins written in Python. Previously, running the Python interpreter as a “subinterpreter” in the same process space proved error-prone. The new release will run each plugin’s Python interpreter in a separate process, solving all these problems.

Just-in-Time Device Reservation
In current versions, devices are reserved quite early during backup jobs. There can be a long period between the reservation and the first actual write operation. The device cannot be used for other tasks during this time, even though it is not doing anything. With the new just-in-time reservation feature, Bareos changes it by reserving a device only when data is ready to be written. This feature significantly improves the utilization of expensive tape drives.

Support for WORM Tapes
Bareos previously used a two-phase initialization for tape labels, which was incompatible with WORM (Write Once Read Many) tapes. Bareos 24 introduces a single-write labeling procedure, allowing users to utilize WORM tapes effectively.

Windows Binaries Built Natively with MSVC Compiler
The Windows binaries for Bareos have been cross-compiled on Linux until now. With the new build system in Bareos 24, these binaries are built using the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler, resulting in faster binaries and better support for Microsoft toolchains.

For more details, visit bareos.com, sign-up for updates at bareos.com/sign-up/, and as always, stay backed up with Bareos!

-- 
 Aleksei Grigorev                aleksei....@bareos.com
 Bareos GmbH & Co. KG            
 https://www.bareos.com          

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