Create Bacula file storage

Create Bacula file storage#

To write Bacula backups you need to have Bacula storage. The Bacula storage is the destination place where backups are written.

After fresh installing Bacula, you will have the Bacula file storage already created but this is the default storage that can be not ready to use in the production environment. This documentation section will help you to prepare the Bacula file storage that will be adapted to your environment and ready to use in production.

What is required?#

  • Bacularis version 4.1.0 or greater.

  • Disk storage path where you want to store Bacula backups.

  • Bacula Storage Daemon installed on the host with the storage path.

  • If the Storage Daemon is in remote location for the web interface, then on that remote host the Bacularis API needs to be installed and configured.

How to do it?#

Preparation#

Before starting the Bacula file storage configuration in Bacularis, you need to set proper permissions for the destination storage device(s) directory. To check what system user and group your Bacula Storage Daemon uses to work, you can run this command in the console:

ps -o user,group,comm -C bacula-sd

In result you can see for example:

USER    GROUP    COMMAND
bacula  tape     bacula-sd

Now you can create the destination storage directory with valid ownership because you know the Storage Daemon user and group. In this example we used /var/lib/bacula-storage path, but the path can be different, of course.

mkdir -m 750 /var/lib/bacula-storage
chown bacula:tape /var/lib/bacula-storage

Now the storage path is ready to use by the Bacula Storage Daemon.

In the Bacularis web interface please go to the Storage page available in the main menu, then click the Add file storage button. This action will direct you to the new file storage wizard.

Step 1 - General#

In the wizard please fill the new storage name (and optional description).

On the question What storage type would you like to create? you can choose:

  • Single file device storage - that is simple single Bacula device. It can be used for exmaple in small Bacula environment with planned small number of backups.

  • Multi-device file storage (Autochanger) - this is the full virtual autochanger with many drives. It is more flexible solution than single file device storage and it is useful in all types of Bacula environments.

Step 2 - Storage#

On the next wizard step if you chose the autochanger storage option before, now you will be able to set how many backup/restore drives and how many restore reserved drives should the autochanger have.

In the text field for the storage directory path for data volumes, please type previously prepared path. In this example it is /var/lib/bacula-storage.

On the question What is the storage media type? please define desired media type name. It can be any string that in case file storage shoud be unique for every new file storage that uses a new storage path.

Step 3 - Summary#

On the last wizard step please review the wizard summary and finalize the wizard. You will be asked about allowing Bacularis to restart the Bacula Storage component.

Important notes#

If during finalizing the wizard you do not allow Bacularis to restart the Bacula Storage component, all the new Bacula file storage configuration will be created but it will not be ready to use until the Storage Daemon restart. It is because to apply new storage configuration the Storage Daemon needs to be restarted.

The Storage Daemon can be restarted at the end of the new file storage wizard or it can be done later on the storage details page. You can go to the storage details page using the following path:

[Main menu] => [Page: Storage] => [Select storage in table] => [Button: Details]

Video guide#

Here you can watch the video guide that shows installing Bacula file storage with the Bacularis new storage wizard.