Bacula is a popular cross-platform network backup tool that stores data on your choice of media — tape, CD/DVD, online disk, or USB device. Project Manager Kern Sibbald began developing Bacula more than eight years ago, although he didn’t consider it ready for public use until April, 2002. He says that although adoption of the tool has been slower than he initially expected, it actually worked out for the best in the end.
“I expected Bacula to be adopted by more people and quicker than it was initially,” says Sibbald. “I imagine that was because of the fact that it was new software with an unproven track record. The slower than expected start was actually a blessing in disguise, because it allowed me several years of working closely with users and their problems, thus permitting me to quickly recognize deficiencies and implement or redesign the most critical features.”
Interest in Bacula has grown steadily over the years, something Sibbald says can be attributed to several things. “First it is open source, while most network backup solutions are proprietary. Although there are a number of things that set Bacula apart from all other backup solutions, one that particularly strikes me is that it is the first and only backup solution to use an SQL server for its database (Tivoli does allow certain SQL queries of their database, but to the best of my knowledge it is not a full SQL server).
“In the open source world, Bacula is one of the two ‘enterprise’-class projects: Bacula and Zmanda. Bacula is open source, Zmanda is based on the open source Amanda project, but most all of Zmanda’s additions appear to be proprietary. Bacula is based on modern technology (daemons, multi-threading, C++, …) and is quite scalable running on the PlayStation at the low end and big IBM mainframes at the high end.”
What’s next for the Bacula project? Sibbald plans to focus on features that will particularly appeal to enterprise, and to incorporate professional support services as well.