HPC Partner Program

The HPC Partner Program, provided by Bacula Systems, is designed for businesses that target the high-performance community above all else – including universities, national laboratories, research institutions, supercomputing centers, and technology providers supporting them.

HPC environments are not only wider than typical enterprise IT systems – they have many other fundamental differences, including specialized infrastructure, multi-decade retention mandates, extreme performance requirements, massive parallel file systems, and more. Bacula’s core structure was created with such challenges in mind.

The HPC Data Protection Challenge

Why Traditional Backup Fails at Scale

Many backup solutions were designed for enterprise IT environments. As such, they tend to fail when applied to HPC environments – for several reasons:

Economics break down — Per-TB pricing becomes astronomical at the petabyte scale. A single large research project can exceed annual backup budgets.
Performance can’t keep up — Backup windows measured in days or weeks are unacceptable for active research environments.
Architecture doesn’t fit — Parallel file systems like GPFS, Lustre, and BeeGFS require specialized handling that generic backup tools can’t provide.
Tape handling is an afterthought — HPC environments depend on tape for long-term retention. Most modern backup vendors have deprioritized support for tape.
Compliance gets complicated — Research data retention requirements span decades. Federal funding mandates and security classifications add complexity.

Why Partner with Bacula for HPC?

Address a Massive, Underserved Market

The global HPC market is projected to reach $83.3 billion by 2030, growing at 7%+ annually. Government and defense sectors are investing heavily in AI-HPC convergence, with the U.S. Department of Energy alone securing $1.15 billion for FY 2025. And yet, most HPC organizations still rely on legacy backup infrastructure – with IBM Spectrum Protect (TSM) deployments being the most common example, even if they are over a decade old. As such, these businesses are always looking for opportunities to upgrade.

Differentiate on Technical Capability

Many of your competitors are incapable of operating in this market to begin with. Whenever a national laboratory or a research university needs a backup solution for a parallel file system housing billions of files, a lot of the usual suspects, such as Commvault, Veeam, or Rubrik, do not apply. However, Bacula can still work in such cases, and as an HPC Partner, you are among the very few organizations that can address these customers’ actual requirements.

Win on Economics

The per-core pricing model that Bacula provides is a game-changer for data-intensive environments. A research institution with 50 petabytes of data can achieve a 50-70% lower TCO than traditional per-TB licensing. It’s not simply a marginal improvement, but a fundamental change in what is and is not economically feasible.

Build Long-Term Relationships

HPC customers aren’t known for making frequent changes in their backup infrastructures. Data retention requirements across decades create lasting, recurring relationships. Once you have successfully deployed Bacula in an HPC environment, you have likely earned a customer for years or even decades to come.

Program Benefits

Revenue Rebates

Earn tiered rebates based on your annual Bacula bookings:

Training Benefits

Free Admin I Training — All HPC Partners receive complimentary seats for Bacula Administration I training
Discounted Advanced Training — 50% discount on Bacula Expert Series training

Technical Benefits

NFR Licenses — Generous licensing for internal infrastructure, demo environments, and proof-of-concept deployments
Technical Account Manager — Dedicated TAM support for your most significant and most complex HPC opportunities
Engineering Access — Direct access to Bacula engineering for integration questions and technical deep-dives
Pre-Sales Support — Expert pre-sales engineering for qualified HPC opportunities

HPC Technical Capabilities

Parallel File System Support

Bacula provides native, optimized support for the file systems that power HPC:

IBM Spectrum Scale (GPFS) — Policy-based backup, snapshot integration, and metadata preservation
Lustre — High-performance backup of Lustre deployments at scale
BeeGFS — Support for this increasingly popular parallel file system

Tape Library Integration

Bacula is one of the few modern backup platforms with active investment in tape technology:

Direct-to-tape backup — Skip disk staging when performance requirements allow
Large tape library support — Integration with enterprise tape libraries (IBM, Quantum, Spectra Logic)
LTFS compatibility — Support for Linear Tape File System where required
Multi-decade retention — Tape media lifecycle management for long-term archives

Target Markets

National Laboratories — DOE national laboratories, defense research facilities, and government scientific institutions
Research Universities — Major research universities with significant computational resources
Aerospace & Defense — Defense contractors and aerospace companies with HPC workloads
Life Sciences & Pharmaceutical — Genomics, drug discovery, and clinical research organizations
Financial Services — Quantitative trading, risk modeling, and financial analytics
Energy & Climate — Oil and gas exploration, weather modeling, and climate research

Getting Started

Application Process:

Apply — Complete the HPC Partner application with details on your HPC experience and target markets
Qualification — Discuss your capabilities and goals with our partner team
Agreement — Review and sign the HPC Partner Agreement
Onboarding — Complete training and receive your NFR licenses
Launch — Begin pursuing HPC opportunities with Bacula support

Contact

Data Protection for the World's Most Demanding Computing Environments