On Wed, 10 Feb 2010, Markus Neteler wrote:

> Dear list,
>
> I am looking for a backup solution for our cluster system (10 TB
> disk space, 60% in use). There are (yet) very few users only.
>
> I wonder which backup software to install. Would bacula (web)
> be a good solution? If so, is there a way to grab recent RPMs
> which are compliant to SL5.2? The backup device is a
> Dell PV 124T tape autoloader with barcode reader.
>
> thanks in advance for any advice,

We have been using bacula (to make backups from our rsync copies of home 
directories and central config files etc) since 2007 but that is on sl4 
and with a bacula version which is now very out-of-date (2.0.3 - since we 
havn't felt the need to upgrade yet).

My memory suggests that building the RPMs wasn't very hard and I submitted 
the (minor) changes for building on sl back to the bacula people so their 
SRPMs may now just work out-of-the-box.

One benefit of the newer versions is that apparently the database schemas 
are now more efficient, we find that while backing up directories full of 
loads of tiny files (typical home directories) bacula can cause the 
postgres processes to consume lots of CPU (and disk i/o).  We recently 
moved out postgres tree to a raid-box on a different scsi bus to improve 
the i/o and that has improved things a bit.

[ I'm not really a database person and my attempts to 'tune' the postgres 
settings didn't seem to improve things as much as I would have liked... ]

> Markus
>
> --
> http://gis.fem-environment.eu/
>

-- 
/--------------------------------------------------------------------\
| "Computers are different from telephones.  Computers do not ring." |
|       -- A. Tanenbaum, "Computer Networks", p. 32                  |
---------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Jon Peatfield, _Computer_ Officer, DAMTP,  University of Cambridge |
| Mail:  [log in to unmask]     Web:  http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/ |
\--------------------------------------------------------------------/