What is Bacula Enterprise? Components and Features

Bacula Components

Bacula Enterprise is the enterprise-level backup software. Bacula Enterprise is highly scalable and flexible to meet the growing needs of your company. Below you can find a detailed description of the functionality of the Bacula-based backup system and its plug-ins, as well as a description of the terminology of Bacula: Director, Job, File Daemon (FD), Storage Daemon (SD) and others.

The Director is the central component that manages all backup and restore operations. It is responsible for scheduling backups, communicating with the File daemons, and interacting with the Storage daemons. The Director also maintains the Catalog, which is a database of all the backups that have been performed. The Director is typically installed on a dedicated server, but it can also be installed on the same machine as the File daemons. The Director is a daemon, which means that it runs in the background and does not require user interaction.

The File daemon (FD) is a program that runs on the client machines and is responsible for communicating with the Director and transferring files to the Storage daemons. The File daemon also handles the interaction with the operating system and filesystems on the client machine. The File daemon is typically installed on the same machine as the files that need to be backed up. The File daemon is a daemon, which means that it runs in the background and does not require user interaction.

The Storage daemon (SD) is a program that runs on the machine where the backup media is located. It is responsible for reading and writing files to the backup media, as well as communicating with the Director and File daemons. The Storage daemon is typically installed on the same machine as the backup media, such as a tape drive or a disk array. The Storage daemon is a daemon, which means that it runs in the background and does not require user interaction.

The Bacula Job is a configuration resource that defines the work that Bacula must perform to backup or restore a particular Client. It consists of the following:

• Type: The type of job, such as backup, restore, verify, or copy;
• Level: The level of backup, such as full, incremental, or differential;
• FileSet: The set of files to be backed up;
• Storage: The Storage daemon that will be used to store the backups;
• Schedule: The schedule for the job, such as daily, weekly, or monthly.

The Catalog is a database that stores information about all the backups that have been performed. This information includes the following:

• Name of the job;
• Time and date the job was run;
• Files that were backed up;
• The location of the backups;
• The status of the backups.

Task Management

• Network backup and data recovery with a centralized Bacula Director
• Internal scheduler to automatically run backup jobs
• Scheduling multiple backup tasks (Bacula Jobs) simultaneously
• You can run one backup job or several jobs at the same time (so-called multiplexing)
• Determining the order (ordering) of jobs using priorities
• Copy and/or migration tasks D2D2T (disk to disk to tape)
• Console and web interface using API to director for simple management

Backup Policies & Management 

• Full: backup all files included in a File Set without any backup history
• Differential: backup of all files since the last Full backup
• Incremental: backup of all files since last backup
• Backup syndication using Progressive Virtual Full feature
• Backup job scheduler
• Jobs automatic restart when incomplete (typically used to restart jobs that have not been completed or any interrupted jobs)
• Bandwidth management (the bandwidth limitation directive can be added to FD and/or DR to limit the traffic used by the job and can be configured on a per-job basis in the director’s conf file)

Advanced Safety & Security

• Compliance with FIPS 140-2
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
• Data encryption cipher (AES 128, AES192, AES256 or blowfish) and the digest algorithm
• CRAM-MD5 authentication password between Director, FD, SD and other components
• Customizable TLS encryption between all components
• Configurable per-volume data encryption from FD to FD
• Calculation of MD5 or SHA1 signatures of file data
• Windows Encrypting File System (EFS) support
• Silent Data Corruption detection
• Verification of files previously catalogued, including a Tripwire like capability (system break-in detection)
• SHA256 and SHA512 signature for increased assurance in Verify jobs for detecting file modification
• Modular architecture for ransomware protection
• Immutable disk volume feature
• bconsole option to connect to LDAP directory in order to protect its access
• Advanced rasomware detection tools
• One-time password authentication allowing use of smartphones with bio-metric functions to access Bacula’s web GUI
• SD encryption
• SIEM integration
• Automatic malware protection (backup, restore, verify)
• Improved & enriched security metrics
• SNMP monitoring integration module
• NFS immutability support (Netapp SnapLock)

Data Recovery

• Restoring one or more files selected online for the current backup or future backup at a specified time and date
• Restoration of a complete system, starting with bare metal for Linux and Windows
• Listing and recovering files using offline tools bls and beextract
• Ability to restore catalog database quickly using bootstrap files
• Ability to update the catalog database by scanning backup volumes with the program bscan

SQL Catalog 

• Database directory for storing volumes, pools, backup jobs, and files for backup
• Support for MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite catalog databases
• Expandable queries to MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite catalog databases

Managing Volumes & Pools 

• Volume labels to prevent accidental overwriting
• Support of IBM and ANSI tape labels
• Any number and type of jobs and FDs can be stored in single volume
• Multivolume data storage with free space management
• Management of pools and volume library providing flexibility (for example, monthly, weekly or daily volume sets)
• Machine independent volume data format
• Backwards compatible volume data formats so that old volumes can always be read
• Flexible message handler, including message routing from any daemon back to director and automatic sending of reports by e-mail
• Swapping data to disk during a backup, followed by writing to tape from disk spooled files

Storage Backup

• Broad support of tape storage types
• Storage Daemon to Storage Daemon replication with deduplication
• Storage Daemon calls File Daemon (firewall)
• Nutanix Filer plugin
• NDMP support (incl. NetApp accelerator plugin)
• SAN Shared Tape Library plugin
• Hadoop HDFS
• Full hybrid cloud capability via S3, Azure, Glacier, Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud (incl. S3 storage tier control)

Client Backup

• Bare metal recovery for Linux and Windows (UEFI & EFI support)
• Continuous data protection
• Client-behind-NAT functionality

Support for Most Storage Devices

• Support for autochangers with a simple shell interface that can interact with almost any autoloader
• Auto-changer barcode support: automatic labeling of the tape using barcodes
• Automatic support for multiple autochanger stores via barcodes or tape reader
• Support for multi-disc autochangers
• Backup and restore Raw devices. Recovery must be done on the same device.
• All volume blocks (approximately 64 KB) contain a data checksum
• Support for migration: moving data from one pool to another or from one volume to another

Support for Multiple Operating Systems

• Bacula supports and is certified on 30+ OSes
• Clients available for Linux 34/64, FreeBSD, Solaris, Windows 32/64, Mac OS X and some other Un*x/BSD systems
• Servers available for Linux 34/64, FreeBSD and Solaris

Support for Multiple Hypervisors 

• VMware
• Hyper V
• Citrix Xen
• KVM
• Proxmox
• Nutanix
• RHV
• Azure VM

Support for Multiple Databases 

• MySQL (incl. Percona) / MariaDB
• PostgreSQL
• MS SQL
• SAP HANA
• Oracle
• SAP ASE (Sybase)
• Hadoop

Support for Multiple Container Environments 

• Kubernetes (incl. Tanzu, Rancher and others)
• Docker
• OpenShift

Support for Windows-based Environments 

• Windows EFS for better security
• Windows mount point snapshots
• Windows Server, Microsoft 365 and MS AD granular backup

Snapshots 

• Snapshot support for Windows
• Snapshots for Unix and Linux platforms compatible with ZFS, BTRFS and LVM
• Snapshotify plugin which allows to take snapshots of the state of applications without interrupting their work
• Snapshot support on RedHat, Debian or Ubuntu systems without LVM support using Snapshotify

Deduplication and Compression of Data 

• Global Endpoint Deduplication (patented technology, incl. deduplication in the cloud)
• Comm-line compression (enabled on every component of Bacula by default and can divide by 3 the amount of transferred data)
• Aligned Volume Deduplication

Management & API

• BWeb Management Suite web-based GUI
• GUI interface BAT
• Command console Bconsole
• REST API

Miscellaneous

• Multithreaded implementation
• Automatic DB pruning
• Flexible configuration file for each daemon
• Daemon reporting (f.e., get insights on available disk space or disk usage)