Bacula Enterprise presents some extremely powerful advantages over other Backup technologies:
Advantages Over Other Backup Programs
- 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 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
- It has a script that will restart your networking (with the right IP address)
- It has a script to automatically mount your hard disks
- It has a full Bacula FD statically linked
- You can easily add additional data/programs, … to the disk
You may also be interested in:
