Basic information

Purpose

In daily configuration work with Bacula environments some tasks can be repeatable. Bacula administrator adds the same configuration directives to many resources. For example, we would like to enable encryption for selected clients. If they are two or three clients, it is easy to do by opening configuration for every client and enabling encryption. But what if we have a hundred or two hundred clients to change? This is where patterns come in handy.

Configs and patterns

Together with the pattern function there is provided one more function called configs. The configs are pieces of Bacula resource configuration that can be applied to selected Bacula resources. Patterns are defined sets of configs that can be applied to Bacula components (Director, Storage Daemon, File Daemon). So, configs contain single Bacula resource directives and they are for the Bacula configuration resources. Patterns contain group of configs for whole Bacula component configuration. Both configs and patterns can be used separately. There is possible to apply configs in a bulk action for selected resources. There is also possible to apply many patterns in a bulk action for selected local or remote Bacula components.

Detailed information about configs and patterns you can find in the dedicated chapters for them: Configs and Patterns.

Who can use configs and patterns?

Configs and patterns function can be used only by Bacularis administrators. They are all users with the admin role assigned. This function has been added in Bacularis version 3.2.0.

Is it safe?

Before applying configs or patterns to configuration, users can run simulation where they can see exactly how the configuration will look like after applying changes. In addition, both configs and patterns provide overwrite directive policies that determines behaviors if the same directives are in configs and in the Bacula configuration. Policies can be tested the same as configs in the simulation.

If during applying configs to production there happen an error with the Bacula configuration validation, configuration will not be saved. Configuration is always validated before saving in the Bacula configuration files.