Storage Backends

A Bareos Storage Daemon can use various storage backends:

Tape: is used to access tape device and thus has sequential access.
File: tells Bareos that the device is a file. It may either be a file defined on fixed medium or a removable filesystem such as USB. All files must be random access devices.
Fifo: is a first-in-first-out sequential access read-only or write-only device.
Droplet: is used to access an object store supported by libdroplet, most notably S3. For details, refer to Droplet Storage Backend.
GFAPI (GlusterFS): is used to access a GlusterFS storage.
Dedupable: is used to support filesystem block-based deduplication, see Dedupable Backend.

Droplet Storage Backend

The bareos-storage-droplet backend (Version >= 17.2.7) can be used to access Object Storage through libdroplet. Droplet supports a number of backends, most notably S3. For details about Droplet itself see https://github.com/scality/Droplet.

Requirements

The Bareos package bareos-storage-droplet is not available on all platforms.
Droplet S3:
- The droplet S3 backend can only be used with virtual-hosted-style buckets like http://bucket.s3_server/object. Path-style buckets are not supported. It has been tested successfully with AWS S3 and CEPH Object Gateway S3.

Installation

Install the package bareos-storage-droplet by using an appropriate package management tool (eg. dnf, zypper, apt).

Configuration

The droplet backend requires a Bareos Director Storage Resource, a Bareos Storage Daemon Device Resource as well as a Droplet profile file where your access–, secret–keys and other parameters for the connection to your object storage are stored.

AWS S3

Director

First, we will create the new Bareos Director Storage Resource.

For the following example, we

choose the name S3_Object (Dir->Storage).
choose Media Type (Dir->Storage) = S3_Object1. We name it this way, in case we later add more separated Object Storages that don’t have access to the same volumes.
assume the Bareos Storage Daemon is located on the host bareos-sd.example.com and will offers the Device Resource S3_ObjectStorage (Sd->Device)(to be configured in the next section).

bareos-dir.d/storage/S3_Object.conf

Storage {
    Name = "S3_Object"
    Address  = "bareos-sd.example.com"
    Password = "secret"
    Device = "AWS_S3_1-00"
    Media Type = "S3_Object1"
}

These credentials are only used to connect to the Bareos Storage Daemon. The credentials to access the object store (e.g. S3) are stored in the Bareos Storage Daemon Droplet Profile.

Storage Daemon

As of your Bareos Storage Daemon configuration, we need to setup a new device that acts as a link to Object Storage backend.

The name and media type must correspond to those settings in the Bareos Director Storage Resource:

Limitation: Droplet Backend does not support block interleaving

The current implementation has a known Bug that may lead to bogus data on your S3 volumes when you set Maximum Concurrent Jobs (Sd->Device) to a value other than 1. Because of this the default for a backend of type Droplet is set to 1 and the Bareos Storage Daemon will refuse to start if you set it to a value greater than 1.

A device for the usage of AWS S3 object storage with a bucket named backup-bareos located in EU Central 1 (Frankfurt, Germany), would look like this:

bareos-sd.d/device/AWS_S3_1-00.conf

Device {
  Name = "AWS_S3_1-00"
  Media Type = "S3_Object1"
  Archive Device = "AWS S3 Storage"
  Device Type = droplet
  Device Options = "profile=/etc/bareos/bareos-sd.d/device/droplet/aws.profile,bucket=backup-bareos,chunksize=100M"
  Label Media = yes                    # Lets Bareos label unlabeled media
  Random Access = yes
  Automatic Mount = yes                # When device opened, read it
  Removable Media = no
  Always Open = no
  Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1
}

In these examples all the backup data is placed in the bareos-backup bucket on the defined S3 storage. In contrast to other Bareos Storage Daemon backends, a Bareos volume is not represented by a single file. Instead a volume is a sub-directory in the defined bucket and every chunk is placed in the volume directory with the filename 0000-9999 and a size defined in the chunksize option. It is implemented this way, as S3 does not allow to append to a file. Instead it always writes full files, so every append operation could result in reading and writing the full volume file.

Following Device Options (Sd->Device) settings are possible:

profile: Droplet profile path (e.g. /etc/bareos/bareos-sd.d/device/droplet/droplet.profile). Make sure the profile file is readable for user bareos.
acl: Canned ACL
storageclass: Storage Class to use.
bucket: Bucket to store objects in.
chunksize: Size of Volume Chunks (default = 10 Mb). see below the limitation with Maximum Volume Size
iothreads: Number of IO-threads to use for uploads (if not set, blocking uploads are used)
ioslots: Number of IO-slots per IO-thread (0-255, default 10). Set this to values greater than 1 for cached and to 0 for direct writing.
retries: Number of writing tries before discarding the data. Set this to 0 for unlimited retries. Setting anything != 0 here will cause dataloss if the backend is not available, so be very careful (0-255, default = 0, which means unlimited retries).
mmap: Use mmap to allocate Chunk memory instead of malloc().
location: Deprecated. If required (AWS only), it has to be set in the Droplet profile.

Create the Droplet profile to be used. This profile is used later by the droplet library when accessing your cloud storage.

An example for AWS S3 could look like this:

aws.profile

host = s3.amazonaws.com
use_https = true
access_key = myaccesskey
secret_key = mysecretkey
pricing_dir = ""
backend = s3
aws_auth_sign_version = 4
aws_region = eu-central-1

More arguments and the SSL parameters can be found in the documentation of the droplet library: externalReferenceDropletDocConfigurationFile

Limitation: Droplet doesn’t support comments into profile configuration file.

Keep the *.profile clean of any form of comments.

While parameters have been explained in the AWS S3 section, this gives an example about how to backup to a CEPH Object Gateway S3.

bareos-dir.d/storage/S3_Object.conf

Storage {
    Name = "S3_Object"
    Address  = "bareos-sd.example.com"
    Password = "secret"
    Device = "CEPH_1-00"
    Media Type = "S3_Object1"
}

A device for CEPH object storage could look like this:

bareos-sd.d/device/CEPH_1-00.conf

Device {
  Name = "CEPH_1-00"
  Media Type = "S3_Object1"
  Archive Device = "Object S3 Storage"
  Device Type = droplet
  Device Options = "profile=/etc/bareos/bareos-sd.d/device/droplet/ceph-rados-gateway.profile,bucket=backup-bareos,chunksize=100M"
  Label Media = yes                    # Lets Bareos label unlabeled media
  Random Access = yes
  Automatic Mount = yes                # When device opened, read it
  Removable Media = no
  Always Open = no
  Maximum Concurrent Jobs = 1
}

The corresponding Droplet profile looks like this:

ceph-rados-gateway.profile

host = CEPH-host.example.com
use_https = False
access_key = myaccesskey
secret_key = mysecretkey
pricing_dir = ""
backend = s3
aws_auth_sign_version = 2

Main differences are, that aws_region is not required and aws_auth_sign_version = 2 instead of 4.

Limitation: Maximum of 9’999 chunks

You have to make sure that your Maximum Volume Bytes (Dir->Pool) divided by the chunk size doesn’t exceed 9’999.

Example: Maximum Volume Bytes = 300 GB, and chunk size = 100 MB -> 3’000 is ok.

Troubleshooting

iothreads

For testing following Device Options (Sd->Device) should be used:

iothreads=0
retries=1

If the S3 backend is or becomes unreachable, the Bareos Storage Daemon will behave depending on iothreads and retries. When the Bareos Storage Daemon is using cached writing (iothreads >=1) and retries is set to zero (unlimited tries), the job will continue running until the backend becomes available again. The job cannot be canceled in this case, as the Bareos Storage Daemon will continuously try to write the cached files.

Great caution should be used when using retries>=0 combined with cached writing. If the backend becomes unavailable and the Bareos Storage Daemon reaches the predefined tries, the job will be discarded silently yet marked as OK in the Bareos Director.

You can always check the status of the writing process by using status storage=…. The current writing status will be displayed then:

status storage

...
Device "S3_ObjectStorage" (S3) is mounted with:
    Volume:      Full-0085
    Pool:        Full
    Media type:  S3_Object1
Backend connection is working.
Inflight chunks: 2
Pending IO flush requests:
   /Full-0085/0002 - 10485760 (try=0)
   /Full-0085/0003 - 10485760 (try=0)
   /Full-0085/0004 - 10485760 (try=0)
...
Attached Jobs: 175
...

Pending IO flush requests means that there is data to be written. try`=0 means that this is the first try and no problem has occurred. If :strong:`try >0, problems occurred and the storage daemon will continue trying.

Status without pending IO chunks:

status storage

...
Device "S3_ObjectStorage" (S3) is mounted with:
    Volume:      Full-0084
    Pool:        Full
    Media type:  S3_Object1
Backend connection is working.
No Pending IO flush requests.
Configured device capabilities:
  EOF BSR BSF FSR FSF EOM !REM RACCESS AUTOMOUNT LABEL !ANONVOLS !ALWAYSOPEN
Device state:
  OPENED !TAPE LABEL !MALLOC APPEND !READ EOT !WEOT !EOF !NEXTVOL !SHORT MOUNTED
  num_writers=0 reserves=0 block=8
Attached Jobs:
...

For performance, Device Options (Sd->Device) should be configured with:

iothreads >= 1
retries = 0

New AWS S3 Buckets

As AWS S3 buckets are accessed via virtual-hosted-style buckets (like http://bucket.s3_server/object) creating a new bucket results in a new DNS entry.

As a new DNS entry is not available immediately, Amazon solves this by using HTTP temporary redirects (code: 307) to redirect to the correct host. Unfortunately, the Droplet library does not support HTTP redirects.

Requesting the device status only returns an unspecific error:

status storage

*status storage=...
...
Backend connection is not working.
...

Workaround:

Wait until bucket is available a permanent hostname. This can take up to 24 hours.
Configure the AWS location into the profiles host entry. For the AWS location eu-central-1, change host = s3.amazonaws.com into host = s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com:
Droplet profile
```
...
host = s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com
aws_region = eu-central-1
...
```

AWS S3 Logging

If you use AWS S3 object storage and want to debug your bareos setup, it is recommended to turn on the server access logging in your bucket properties. This will allow you to determine whether Bareos attempted to write to your bucket or not.

GFAPI Storage Backend

GFAPI (GlusterFS)

A GlusterFS Storage can be used as Storage backend of Bareos. Prerequisites are a working GlusterFS storage system and the package bareos-storage-glusterfs. See https://www.gluster.org/ for more information regarding GlusterFS installation and configuration and specifically https://docs.gluster.org/en/latest/Administrator-Guide/Bareos/ for Bareos integration. You can use following snippet to configure it as storage device:

Device {
  Name = GlusterStorage
  Archive Device = "Gluster Device"
  Device Options = "uri=gluster://server.example.com/volumename/bareos"
  Device Type = gfapi
  Media Type = GlusterFile
  Label Media = yes
  Random Access = yes
  Automatic Mount = yes
  Removable Media = no
  Always Open = no
}

Adapt server and volume name to your environment.

Version >= 15.2.0

Dedupable Backend

Dedupable

Note

This backend is still experimental and subject to enhancements and changes.

A dedupable device splits up the data it receives into bareos specific data and file data to store them separately. It tries to store the file data blocks it receives only at certain intervals in its storage. This should make it possible for your filesystem to deduplicate its the actual file data.

For this to work correctly, the device option BlockSize needs to be set to the block size your filesystem uses to deduplicate. It is also important that Maximum Network Buffer Size (Fd->Client)is divisible by this size.

example configuration

Device {
  Name = DedupStorage
  Media Type = Dedup
  Device Type = dedupable
  Device Options = "Block Size = 16k"
  Archive Device = storage
  LabelMedia = yes
  Random Access = yes
  AutomaticMount = yes
  RemovableMedia = no
  AlwaysOpen = no
}

Version >= 23.1.0