Bacula is a set of Open Source, enterprise ready, computer programs that permit you to manage backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across a network of computers of different kinds.

Bacula supports Linux, UNIX and Windows backup clients, and a range of professional backup devices including tape libraries. Administrators and operators can configure the system via a command line console, GUI or web interface; its back-end is a catalog of information stored by MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite.

Any installation contains three kinds of daemons to execute backup and restore functionality:

1) Director Daemon – manages other daemons, queries and updates catalog, interfaces with operator front-ends, automates backup schedules
2) Storage Daemon – makes system calls to drive backup media, responds to read/write requests from Director, and receives backup/restore data from file daemon
3) File Daemon – negotiates client-side communication, encryption and compression, opens file handles to access a client’s data

The master config file is the director’s [/etc/bacula/bacula-dir.conf]. In it is all the information needed to be able to backup the servers it manages. Since each component of the backups system is it’s own daemon, the host, port, and passwords to communicate with them are all listed in the conf file. All options need to match the ones in the daemon’s config, or communication will fail.

Visit http://www.bacula.org/en/ to read more …