FOSS Project Spotlight: Bareos, a Cross-Network, Open-Source Backup Solution

Heike Jurzik and Maik Aussendorf — Fri, 17 May 2019 12:00:00 +0000

Bareos (Backup Archiving Recovery Open Sourced) is a cross-network, open-source backup solution that preserves, archives and recovers data from all major operating systems. The Bareos project started 2010 as a Bacula fork and is now being developed under the AGPLv3 license.

The client/server-based backup solution is actually a set of computer programs (Figure 1) that communicate over the network: the Bareos Director (BD), one or more Storage Dæmons (SD) and the File Dæmons (FD). Due to this modular design, Bareos is scalable—from single computer systems (where all components run on one machine) to large infrastructures with hundreds of computers (even in different geographies).

Figure 1. A Typical Bareos Setup: Director (with Database), File Dæmon(s), Storage Dæmon(s) and Backup Media

The director is the central control unit for all other dæmons. It manages the database (catalog), the connected clients, the file sets (they define which data Bareos should back up), the configuration of optional plugins, before and after jobs (programs to be executed before or after a backup job), the storage and media pool, schedules and the backup jobs. Bareos Director runs as a dæmon.

The catalog maintains a record of all backup jobs, saved files and volumes used. Current Bareos versions support PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite, with PostgreSQL being the preferred database back end.

The File Dæmon (FD) must be installed on every client machine. It is responsible for the backup as well as the restore process. The FD receives the director's instructions, executes them and transmits the data to the Bareos Storage Dæmon. Bareos offers pre-packed file dæmons for many popular operating systems, such as Linux, FreeBSD, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Windows and macOS. Like the director, the FD runs as a dæmon in the background.

The Storage Dæmon (SD) receives data from one or more File Dæmons (at the director's request). It stores the data (together with the file attributes) on the configured backup medium. Bareos supports various types of backup media, as shown in Figure 1, including disks, tape drives and even cloud storage solutions. During the restore process, the SD is responsible for sending the correct data back to the FD(s). The Storage Dæmon runs as a dæmon on the machine handling the backup device(s).

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