Every participant gets a certificate on completing a short test after the course!
These courses are presented by senior experts in backup and recovery.
Backup Expert Series Training Course
These exceptional courses are delivered over separate morning sessions, each day working on a new area. Sign up now for any or all of the following subjects:
Module: Volume Life Cycles
Managing Data Longevity in Backup and Recovery Systems
Duration: ~4 hours
Audience: System Administrators, Storage Engineers, Backup Operators
- In this half-day class, participants explore how backup data lives, ages, and eventually retires through the concept of /Volumes/. Volumes are the fundamental storage blocks that hold backup data—whether they are files on disk, physical tapes, or objects in cloud storage. Each medium carries unique operational and security implications, and understanding how backup applications manage their life cycles is key to efficient, compliant, and secure data retention.
- Using Bacula’s flexible model as our framework, we’ll demystify how the Director, Storage Daemon, and Volume Management interact to enforce retention, recycling, and protection policies. You’ll learn how Bacula’s /Volume Protection/ features prevent premature overwrites, how to safely reclaim space, and how Volume pools and scratch pools automate these processes. Through guided exercises, attendees will configure and observe Volume transitions in real time, gaining practical experience in balancing data longevity, cost control, and regulatory compliance. This understanding of volume life cycles will be of great help to any backup and recovery professional, whichever type of professional backup application they may be using.
Modules of the Volume Life Cycles course:
- Concept of a Volume – what Volumes represent across disk, tape, and object storage; how Bacula abstracts these media
- Understanding Volume Life Cycle Stages – creation, use, retention, expiration, recycling, and deletion.
- Bacula’s Volume Management Model – Pools, Labels, Volume Status, and automatic recycling.
- Storage-Specific Considerations – specifics of tape, disk-based and object storage systems.
- Immutability – adding resiliency against problems, errors and attacks.
- Policies and Automation – automatic Volume recycling policies; using truncation,
|RecyclePool|and|ScratchPool|for efficient storage management. - Hands-On Session – simulate Volume creation, expiration, and recycling using Bacula’s console commands.
- Best Practices & Troubleshooting – monitoring Volume use, predicting space needs, avoiding accidental data loss
Module: Hardening Backup Agents
Duration: ~4 hours
Audience: System Administrators, Storage Engineers, Backup Operators.
In this half-day workshop we will deep-dive into the often-overlooked “client side” of your backup system’s security architecture: the backup agent (e.g., the FileDaemon component in the industry-leading solution Bacula). While many organizations spend time securing backup servers and storage, the agent that sits on individual hosts (servers, workstations, applications) is a very attractive target for attackers seeking to manipulate backups, hide malicious code, or exfiltrate data. In this course we’ll work through a practical threat model: how the daemon communicates, what permissions it holds, and how a compromise there could undermine your full recovery posture.”
Using Bacula’s hardening features (such as AllowedBackupDirectories, AllowedRestoreDirectories, and AllowedScriptDirectories) as a foundation, you’ll learn how to apply these controls and translate them into your broader backup agent architecture – regardless of the backup solution you use. We’ll cover configuration strategies, operational monitoring and logging, role‐based access and least privilege, and recovery plans for when agents themselves become a vector of attack.
By the end of the session you’ll have an actionable checklist and hardened configuration model you can adapt into your backup environment immediately.
Modules of the Hardening Backup Agents Course:
- Understanding the backup agent: What is it? What does it do?
- Deamon communication: How it works and why this is critical to security
- Permissions: How to configure correctly – and add in extra protection
- Applying Controls: Best Practices
- Operational Monitoring: Getting the data that you need
- Role-Based Access: How to configure the right access to the right people
- Recovery Plans: Strategies for dealing with attack
Module: Advanced FileSets
Duration: ~4 hours
Audience: System Administrators, Storage Engineers, Backup Operators.
This course is designed for experienced Bacula users who want to master the design, automation, and management of FileSets in complex backup environments. Participants will learn how to build reusable and flexible FileSet configurations that reduce administrative overhead while improving consistency, scalability, and reliability across large infrastructures.
Through practical examples and expert guidance, attendees will explore how to create reusable, generic FileSets and split them effectively for different use cases. The course also covers automated and dynamically generated FileSets, enabling administrators to adapt backup definitions to changing environments with minimal manual effort.
Participants will learn how to leverage external information sources to create “magic” FileSets that respond intelligently to system data and operational requirements. Emphasis is placed on validation, troubleshooting, and ensuring configurations behave exactly as intended in production scenarios.
By the end of the course, attendees will be able to design, implement, and maintain advanced FileSet strategies that are efficient, reliable, and aligned with enterprise backup best practices—ensuring everything works as it should, every time.
Modules of the Advanced FileSets Course:
- Creating reusable, generic file sets: Learn how to design modular FileSets that can be reused across multiple jobs, clients, and environments to simplify administration and ensure consistency.
- Splitting file sets: Explore techniques for separating FileSets by purpose, data type, or policy to improve flexibility, performance, and manageability.
- Automated creation of file sets: Understand how to generate and maintain FileSets programmatically to reduce manual effort and support large-scale environments.
- Dynamically generated file sets: Examine how FileSets can be built at runtime based on system conditions, variables, or changing infrastructure.
- Using external information to create “magic” file sets: Discover how to leverage external data sources, scripts, or integrations to automatically construct intelligent, context-aware FileSets.
- And of course making sure everything works as it should!
| Calendar – Backup Expert Series | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Day | Duration | Price |
| May 2026 | 21st | Online class – European Timing (2pm start) – English language | € 300 |
| May 2026 | 28th | Online class – European Timing (2pm start) – English language | € 300 |
| June | Date Pending | Online class – European Timing (2pm start) – English language | € 300 |
Course pre-requisites
- Good systems administration skills
- Some Linux knowledge
- Enthusiasm to become a backup and recovery rock star!
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