bacula-ng cookbook

This cookbook configures Bacula backup system.

This cookbook's home is at https://github.com/3ofcoins/chef-cookbook-bacula-ng/

Requirements

The cookbook has been developed and tested on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Backup clients should work on any reasonably recent Linux distribution; no guarantees about the director or storage daemon.

Required cookbooks:

• postgresql or mysql (for the director)
• database (for the director)
• iptables
• openssl

Usage

Configure the backup server to add recipe[bacula-ng::server] to the run list. It will configure the machine to run both director and storage daemon. If you want to configure them separately, use bacula-ng::director and bacula-ng::storage recipes.

On the director node, set node['bacula']['director']['database'] to "mysql" if you want to use MySQL rather than PostgreSQL as the database backend.

On the nodes to be backed up, add recipe[bacula-ng] or recipe[bacula-ng::client] to the run list. After configuring a new client node, re-run Chef client on the director node to update its configuration.

Chicken and Egg

Bacula Director needs to know a storage node; storage node needs to know its director. If both live on one machine, bacula-ng::server recipe takes care of that. To run these on separate machines, until we can think of anything better, the procedure is:

• Set up storage node with bacula-ng::storage recipe. It will include a stub director entry in its config to be able to proceed.
• Then, set up director node with bacula-ng::director recipe. It will find the storage and insert it into the configuration.
• Run chef-client on storage node again. It will be able to find the director now, and update the storage daemon's configuration.

If you run chef-solo, chef-solo-search will help you configure it all in a single pass.

Jobs

Default configuration only includes two jobs: BackupCatalog to backup the Bacula's catalog data, and RestoreFiles to restore backed up files to the directory. It's up to user to add more specific jobs, tailored for their environment. The jobs are defined in bacula_jobs data bag. The data bag should contain following fields:

• id -- obligatory data bag item ID
• name -- if present, passed to the director config template as a pretty job name
• director_config -- cookbook-qualified name of template with director's config snippet; defaults to bacula-ng::bacula-dir-job.conf.erb
• director_scripts -- array of cookbook-qualified names of cookbook files with scripts to upload to director's /etc/bacula/scripts/_id_/; defaults to []
• director_recipes -- recipes to add to director's run list
• backup_scripts -- array of cookbook-qualified names of cookbook files with scripts to upload to backup client's /etc/bacula/scripts/_id_/; defaults to []
• backup_recipes -- recipes to add to backup client's run list
• restore_scripts -- array of cookbook-qualified names of cookbook files with scripts to upload to restore client's /etc/bacula/scripts/_id_/; defaults to []
• restore_recipes -- recipes to add to restore client's run list

The default director_config template will understand these additional fields:

• files -- array of files to add to fileset
• backup_settings -- dictionary of settings pasted into backup job's JobDefs entry
• restore_settings -- dictionary of settings pasted into restore job's entry
• priority -- job's priority (default is 10)
• strippath -- add strippath value to FileSet's Options section.

The director will include director_config, director_scripts, and director_recipes for all defined jobs. Clients need to have the job defined in bacula.client.backup or bacula.client.restore attributes.

The director_config template will receive following variables:

• @job -- the data bag itself
• @clients -- array of nodes that have the job listed in their bacula.client.backup attribute

Please see the [templates/default/bacula-dir-job.conf.erb](default bacula-dir-job.conf.erb) template for inspiration.

Unmanaged Hosts

If you need to back up clients not managed by Chef, create a bacula_unmanagedhosts data bag:

{
  "id": "a-legacy-host",
  "bacula": {
    "fd": {
      "password": "WHATEVER"
    }
  },
  "ipaddress": "1.2.3.4"
}

Attributes

• bacula.database -- "postgresql" (default) or "mysql"
• bacula.use_iptables -- if true (default), set up iptables rules to limit access to Bacula's ports
• bacula.client.backup -- array of backup jobs this client will need to run
• bacula.client.file_retention -- File Retention value for the client; default: 1 year
• bacula.client.job_retention -- File Retention value for the client; default: 1000 years
• bacula.client.restore -- array of restore jobs this client will run.
• bacula.director.volume_retention -- Volume Retention for the main Pool; default: 1000 years
• bacula.storage.directory -- directory to store backup tapes

Recipes

• default - includes client recipe
• client - includes file recipe
• server - includes director and storage recipes
• file - configures Bacula file daemon (client)
• director - configures Bacula director daemon and console
• storage - configures Bacula storage daemon

Author

Author: Maciej Pasternacki maciej@3ofcoins.net