[Bacula-devel] Proposal: Better support for portable clients that may have multiple addresses

[Phil S. <al...@me...>]

Laptops frequently have both a wireless network adapter and a wired
network adapter.  Sometimes both are built in; sometimes the wired
connection is in a docking station.  Rarely do both have the same
address or hostname, as doing so is something of an unwise way to go
about things.  Nevertheless, it is desirable to have a laptop able to be
backed up via either interface, with the wired interface preferred due
to much greater throughput.  (In fact, throughput limitations may very
well rule out doing Full backups over wireless.)

Similarly, it may be desirable to back up a laptop whether it is onsite
or at a remote location, though it will very probably have a different
address while at the remote location.  Also, system administrators in
secured environments may have a policy of performing restores only to
machines physically present on-site, so as to be able to physically
verify they are restoring to a machine which is authorized to hold the
data to be restored.


I propose, first of all, the following addition:


1.  Add an optional "Secondary Address" or "Alternate Address" field to
the Client record.  (I'm not certain which is better; I'm leaning
towards "Secondary".)

example:
	Address = myhost.wired.mynetwork
	Secondary Address = myhost.wireless.mynetwork

When attempting to contact a client, Bacula will attempt to contact it
using the address or FQDN given in the Address record first.  If the
client is not reachable at this address, AND a "Secondary Address" field
is defined in the Client record, Bacula will then attempt to contact the
client at the secondary address.



Secondly, to address the possibility of limited bandwidth while at an
alternate location or connected only via a wireless interface, or
security policies restricting remote restore jobs:

2.  Add a "Secondary Address Allowed Levels" field, ignored unless an
"Secondary Address" field is found.

example:
	Secondary Address Allowed Levels = INCR, DIFF, VERIFY

Before starting a job to a client with a defined secondary address,
Bacula will compare the level of the job to be run against the list of
allowed job types (INCR, DIFF, FULL, VERIFY, RESTORE) in the Secondary
Address Allowed Levels field, if one is present.  If the level of the
job is not found in the list, then that job type is not permitted to run
via that interface and the job is cancelled.  If the field does not
exist in the client record, then all job types are presumed to be permitted.




-- 
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  al...@ca...   al...@me...   ph...@co...
         Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                 It's not the years, it's the mileage.