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Advantages Over Other Backup Programs

Bacula Enterprise Edition presents some extremely powerful advantages over other Backup technologies:

Since there is a client for each machine, you can backup and data recovery clients of any type ensuring that all attributes of files are properly saved and restored
It is also possible to backup clients without any client software by using NFS or Samba. However, if possible, we recommend running a Client File daemon on each machine to be backed up
Bacula handles multi-volume backups
A full comprehensive SQL standard database of all files backed up. This permits online viewing of files saved on any particular Volume
Automatic pruning of the database (removal of old records) thus simplifying database administration
Any SQL database engine can be used making Bacula very flexible. Drivers currently exist for MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite
The modular but integrated design makes Bacula very scalable
Since Bacula uses client file servers, any database or other application can be properly shutdown by Bacula using the native tools of the system, backed up, then restarted (all within a Bacula Job)

Bacula has a built-in Job scheduler
The Volume format is documented and there are simple C programs to read/write it
Bacula uses well defined (IANA registered) TCP/IP ports — no rpcs, no shared memory
Bacula installation and configuration is relatively simple compared to other comparable products
According to users, Bacula Enterprise Edition is as fast as the big major commercial applications
According to one specific user, Bacula is four times as fast as another commercial application, probably because that application stores its catalog information in a large number of individual files rather than an SQL database as Bacula does
Aside from several GUI administrative interfaces, Bacula has a comprehensive shell administrative interface, which allows the administrator to use tools such as ssh to administrate any part of Bacula from anywhere (even from home)

Bacula also has a Rescue CD for Linux systems with the following features:

You build it on your own system from scratch with one simple command: make — well, then make burn
It uses your kernel
It captures your current disk parameters and builds scripts that allow you to automatically repartition a disk and format it to put it back to what you had before