OT: Bacula Question

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Hi, folks,

Question, for those that use/have used bacula: I’ve been setting up backups for one team, the server on CentOS 6, but they’re on Windows. If we install the director on Windows, is it possible for the users to restore files from the server to their own machine?

mark

7 thoughts on - OT: Bacula Question

  • Paul Heinlein wrote:

    ‘Friad not. My users are saying they’d like the ability, from their Windows machines, to restore, without having to ask me to do something from the server. And they want to be able to chose the files to restore….

    mark

  • –As Paul alludes, it’s not access to the director that matters. The pieces in play are:

    – storage daemon (has the backups)
    – director (has the index / database)
    – file daemons (running on each machine that is being backed up)
    – control and monitoring consoles. (bconsole, bat, tray monitor, etc)

    The thing that they need to use directly is a console. The console talks to the director which orchestrates the storage daemon and the file daemons to backup from or restore to the client in question.

    So now the question is what console would be suitable to them.

    bconsole is a command-line console; I’ve only used it from UNIX systems, I don’t know if it works from Windows.

    bat is a native GUI, so UNIX only.

    I don’t know of a Windows-based console, but I don’t typically deal with Windows machines, so I’m not saying there isn’t one. If there is, I suspect that it is bundled with the Windows file daemon.

    I suspect your best bet is a web-based console. There are at least three: bacula-web <http://www.bacula-web.org/>, bweb, and a webmin module. I don’t know if you can restrict users so that they can affect only their local machines; you’ll need to do some research on that one.

    (I will usually use bconsole or bat.)

    Devin

  • Devin Reade wrote:

    But is there any way for the clients to run their console, which connects to the director on the server, and tell the director on the server to restore files x,y, & z on the client’s machine?

    mark

  • –I stand corrected. So it’s either install bat on each client machine or have the clients use a web browser to talk to bacula-web or some such.

    Devin

  • –Yes. Per Leon’s email, I was wrong about bat not running under windows. So if you use that solution:
    1. the user starts up the bat console on their windows box
    2. bat connects to the director
    3. the director tells the storage daemon and the file daemon what
    to restore (based on info from bat)
    4. the storage daemon sends the files to the file daemon
    5. the file daemon (which is running on the windows machines, in this
    case) writes them to the the local filesystem

    Devin