Bacula is an open-source, enterprise-level computer backup system for

heterogeneous network In computer networking, a heterogeneous network is a network connecting computers and other devices where the operating systems and protocols have significant differences. For example, local area networks (LANs) that connect Microsoft Windows and ...

s. It is designed to automate backup tasks that had often required intervention from a systems administrator or computer operator. Bacula supports

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

, and

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

backup clients, and a range of professional backup devices including

tape libraries In computer storage, a tape library, sometimes called a tape silo, tape robot or tape jukebox, is a storage device that contains one or more tape drives, a number of slots to hold tape cartridges, a barcode reader to identify tape cartridges ...

. Administrators and operators can configure the system via a

command line A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

console Console may refer to: Computing and video games * System console, a physical device to operate a computer ** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device ** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

web interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fr ...

; its back-end is a catalog of information stored by

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, PostgreSQL, or

SQLite SQLite (, ) is a database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it belongs to the family of embedded databases. It is the m ...

Overview

Bacula is a set of computer programs for managing backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across a network—providing a backup solution for mixed operating system environments. Bacula is open-source and released under the AGPL version 3 license with exceptions to permit linking with OpenSSL and distributing Windows binaries. Bacula is available under a "dual license" (see

Multi-licensing Multi-licensing is the practice of distributing software under two or more different sets of terms and conditions. This may mean multiple different software licenses or sets of licenses. Prefixes may be used to indicate the number of license ...

) AGPLv3 or Proprietary license. Several entities offer commercial support for the AGPL "Bacula community version" while Bacula Systems sells various levels of annual support contracts for "Bacula Enterprise Edition", which contains various non-GPL components developed in-house. In 2015, Bacula Systems was named "Top 20 Most Promising Data Center Solution Providers" by CIO Review. In common with other dual-license software, components developed for the Bacula Enterprise Edition are released into Bacula Community edition after some period of exclusivity to the proprietary version. Since April 2002, Bacula has over 2 million downloads, which makes it the most downloaded open-source backup program.

Features

Bacula's features include:

Network options

* TCP/ IP – client–server communication uses standard ports and services instead of RPC for NFS, SMB, etc.; this eases firewall administration and network security *

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– configurable client–server authentication *

GZIP gzip is a file format and a software application used for file compression and decompression. The program was created by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler as a free software replacement for the compress program used in early Unix systems, and i ...

/ LZO – client-side

compression Compression may refer to: Physical science *Compression (physics), size reduction due to forces *Compression member, a structural element such as a column *Compressibility, susceptibility to compression * Gas compression *Compression ratio, of a ...

to reduce

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consumption; this runs separate from hardware compression done by the backup device * TLS – network communication encryption * MD5/ SHA – verify file integrity * CRC – verify data block integrity * PKI – backup data encryption *

NDMP NDMP, or Network Data Management Protocol, is a protocol meant to transport data between network attached storage (NAS) devices and backup devices. This removes the need for transporting the data through the backup server itself, thus enhancing spee ...

– enterprise version plugin * cloud backup with some S3 file storage services

Client OS

The client software, executed by a "file daemon" running on a Bacula client, supports multiple operating systems.

Considerations

By default, Bacula's differential and incremental backups are based on system time stamps. Consequently, if you move files into an existing directory or move a whole directory into the backup FileSet after a full backup, those files may not be backed up by an incremental save because they may have old dates. You must explicitly update the date/time stamp on all moved files. Bacula versions starting with 3.0 or later support Accurate backup, which is an option that addresses this issue without requiring modification of the files timestamps. This feature should always be used if an accurate state of the filesystem is important. Which criteria should be applied is configurable, i.e. inode comparisons, modification times or md5/sha1 signatures.

History

Forks of Bacula

In 2011, Graham Keeling, a "former" Bacula community developer, released a friendly fork of Bacula. In February 2013 a former Bacula community developer (with several other Free Software users) released Bareos as a fork of Bacula.

References

External links

* {{official website
Bacula Systems' home page
Free software programmed in C Free software programmed in C++ Free backup software Backup software Backup software for Linux 2000 software Software using the GNU AGPL license