1

I am working in a big project in a company and I am responsible to implement Bacula as a backup service. Unfortunately I am the only professional designated to get this server done as soon as possible :-/. Nobody here (at work) has experience with Bacula, so I am going to be the administrator of the service after implementation.

My boss is in a hurry with the results...

After 8 weeks reading Bacula Community Manuals and lot of tests and labs created, I did not find a confident solution to the scenario I have to deal with now:

  • "How to install a Storage Daemon (only the SD) in a remote site to communicate with our Bacula server inside the company? Is it possible?"

  • "If not to the previous question, should I have to mount a remote directory in Bacula Server and use it to point as a Device?"

Obs 1: We only work with Linux machines. Obs 2: We use files, not tapes or robot to store data.

I will really appreciate any help.

Thanks in a advance.

Rafalvso.

Rafalvso
  • 11
  • 1
  • Questions seeking installation, configuration or diagnostic help must include the desired end state, the specific problem or error, sufficient information about the configuration and environment to reproduce it, and attempted solutions. Questions without a clear problem statement are not useful to other readers and are unlikely to get good answers. moreover what is bacula? – djdomi Jun 28 '23 at 17:27

1 Answers1

0

How to install a Storage Daemon (only the SD) in a remote site to communicate with our Bacula server inside the company? Is it possible?"

Yes, absolutely. You just install SD on remote machine and configure the remote address on your bacula-dir.conf file. The exact tasks depends on your installation media: packages from OS or project itself, source files compilation, etc.

For example when install on Debian, you need to install a single package only:

bacula-sd/oldoldstable 9.4.2-2+deb10u1 amd64

(this is from Debian 10).

When installing from source you will build both Dir and SD, but you can run SD only and make Dir simply disabled or manually removed.

If you have a single bacula package which contains both Dir and SD then you can install it and similar to sources build you just disable Dir start and treat it as "nonexistent", even it will be installed. This is a limitation of the project and even Bacula Enterprise product, check:

bacula-enterprise-postgresql/stable,now 16.0.5-23040520~buster amd64 [installed]

which did not ship separate SD.

... remote site to communicate with our Bacula server inside the company?

Answer to this part of the question depends if you can communicate between Dir and SD, so Dir can connect to SD using TCP protocol (port 9103 on SD). If you have any firewall then you should allow (open) this communication. You can test communication with a simple nc -z -v <sdaddr> 9103 command. If you can communicate then you can configure Storage resource in bacula-dir.conf file to point to remote SD - check Address = ... parameter. I hope it helps.

radekk
  • 1
  • 1