Re: A question about volumeRetention

On 10/1/24 03:48, Mehrdad R. wrote:
> Hi everyone
> I am new t Bacula, and I have problem understanding some concepts, one
> of them is the idea of volumes, how they are created and
> VolumeRetention
> I do understand that it is from the backup-to-tape world, and it is
> basical a representation of a tape, right??
> First of all, i probably should mention that i am backing up to disk,
> not to tape, anyways  i thought that Volume retention tells Bacula how
> long to use a Volume and when to create a new one, i.e a
> VolumeRetention of 6 days means Bacula will create a new volume file
> to use very 6 days
> 
> But this does not seem to be the case, from what i have seen in my
> tests. So if I want a new volume to be created every 7 days for weekly
> backups(one full, 6 increments) the only directive to use is "Volume
> Use Duration" like  "Volume Use Duration=6 days 20 hours"??
> What happens to the previous volume, will restore still work as it should??


That is absolutely the way to do it.  Each volume will be marked Used 
when its Use Duration runs out.  If there is no appendable volume (all 
are Used) when a job starts, Bacula will create a new one.  The Used 
volumes will remain present for restores until you clean them up.  The 
typical approach is to use Retention settings to control how long the 
backups are kept active, then move the volumes into the Scratch pool 
when they are purged or all jobs on them have been pruned.  From there 
you can either delete them, or truncate and Recycle them.


-- 
   Phil Stracchino
   Fenian House Publishing
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