Replication: Copy/Migration Jobs

The term Migration, as used in the context of Bacula, means moving data from one Volume to another. In particular it refers to a Job (similar to a backup job) that reads data that was previously backed up to a Volume and writes it to another Volume. As part of this process, the File catalog records associated with the first backup job are purged. In other words, Migration moves Bacula Job data from one Volume to another by reading the Job data from the Volume it is stored on, writing it to a different Volume in a different Pool, and then purging the database records for the first Job.

The Copy process is essentially identical to the Migration feature with the exception that the Job that is copied is left unchanged. This essentially creates two identical copies of the same backup. However, the copy is treated as a copy rather than a backup job, and hence is not directly available for restore. If bacula finds a copy when a job record is purged (deleted) from the catalog, it will promote the copy as real backup and will make it available for automatic restore. Note: in the text below, to simplify it, we usually speak of a migration job. This, in fact, means either a migration job or a copy job.

The Copy and the Migration jobs run without using the File daemon by copying the data from the old backup Volume to a different Volume in a different Pool. It is not possible to run commands on the defined Client via a RunScript from within the Migration or Copy Job.

The selection process for which Job or Jobs are migrated can be based on quite a number of different criteria such as:

a single previous Job
a Volume
a Client
a regular expression matching a Job, Volume, or Client name
the time a Job has been on a Volume
high and low water marks (usage or occupation) of a Pool
Volume size.

The details of these selection criteria will be defined below.

To run a Migration job, you must first define a Job resource very similar to a Backup Job but with Type = Migrate instead of Type = Backup. One of the key points to remember is that the Pool that is specified for the migration job is the only pool from which jobs will be migrated, with one exception noted below. In addition, the Pool to which the selected Job or Jobs will be migrated is defined by the Next Pool = … in the Pool resource specified for the Migration Job.

Bacula permits Pools to contain Volumes with different Media Types. However, when doing migration, this is a very undesirable condition. For migration to work properly, you should use Pools containing only Volumes of the same Media Type for all migration jobs.

The migration job normally is either manually started or starts from a Schedule much like a backup job. It searches for a previous backup Job or Jobs that match the parameters you have specified in the migration Job resource, primarily a Selection Type (detailed a bit later). Then for each previous backup JobId found, the Migration Job will run a new Job which copies the old Job data from the previous Volume to a new Volume in the Migration Pool. It is possible that no prior Jobs are found for migration, in which case, the Migration job will simply terminate having done nothing, but normally at a minimum, three jobs are involved during a migration:

The currently running Migration control Job. This is only a control job for starting the migration child jobs.
The previous Backup Job (already run). The File records for this Job are purged if the Migration job successfully terminates. The original data remains on the Volume until it is recycled and rewritten.
A new Migration Backup Job that moves the data from the previous Backup job to the new Volume. If you subsequently do a restore, the data will be read from this Job.

If the Migration control job finds a number of JobIds to migrate (e.g. it is asked to migrate one or more Volumes), it will start one new migration backup job for each JobId found on the specified Volumes. Please note that Migration doesn’t scale too well since Migrations are done on a Job by Job basis. This if you select a very large volume or a number of volumes for migration, you may have a large number of Jobs that start. Because each job must read the same Volume, they will run consecutively (not simultaneously).

See the directives for migration and copy:

Migration and Copy Directives

Important Migration Considerations

Each Pool into which you migrate Jobs or Volumes must contain Volumes of only one Media Type. Jobs on Volumes will be considered for Migration ** only if the Volume is marked Full, Used, or Error**. Volumes that are still marked Append will not be considered for migration. This prevents Bacula from attempting to read the Volume at the same time it is writing it. It also reduces other deadlock situations, as well as avoids the problem that you migrate a Volume and later find new files appended to that Volume.
Migration takes place on a JobId by JobId basis. That is each JobId is migrated in its entirety and independently of other JobIds. Once the Job is migrated, it will be on the new medium in the new Pool, but for the most part, aside from having a new JobId, it will appear with all the same characteristics of the original job (start, end time, etc.). The column RealEndTime in the catalog Job table will contain the time and date that the Migration terminated, and by comparing it with the EndTime column you can tell whether or not the job was migrated. The original job is purged of its File records, and its Type field is changed from “B” to “M” to indicate that the job was migrated.
As noted above, for the Migration High Bytes, the calculation of the bytes to migrate is somewhat approximate.
If you keep Volumes of different Media Types in the same Pool, it is not clear how well migration will work. We recommend only one Media Type per pool.
It is possible to get into a resource deadlock where Bacula Enterprise does not find enough drives to simultaneously read and write all the Volumes needed to do Migrations. For the moment, you must take care as all the resource deadlock algorithms are not yet implemented. You can also use the Maximum Concurrent Read Jobs directive to control the drive assignment behavior to reduce resource deadlocks. The MaximumConcurrentReadJobs should have a maximum of one less than one half the number of drives that are available for reading and writing. Doing so, will assure that for each read drive there is one that can write so that the Migration jobs will not stall due to a deadlock.
Migration is done only when you run a Migration job. If you set a Migration High Bytes and that number of bytes is exceeded in the Pool no migration job will automatically start. You must schedule the migration jobs, and they must run for any migration to take place.
If you migrate a number of Volumes, a very large number of Migration jobs may start.
Figuring out what jobs will actually be migrated can be a bit complicated due to the flexibility provided by the regex patterns and the number of different options. Turning on a debug level of 100 or more will provide a limited amount of debug information about the migration selection process.
Bacula Enterprise currently does only minimal Storage conflict resolution, so you must take care to ensure that you don’t try to read and write to the same device or Bacula may block waiting to reserve a drive that it will never find. In general, ensure that all your migration pools contain only one Media Type, and that you always migrate to pools with different Media Types.
The Next Pool = … directive must be defined in the Pool referenced in the Migration Job to define the Pool into which the data will be migrated.
Pay particular attention to the fact that data is migrated on a Job by Job basis, and for any particular tape Volume, only one Job can read that Volume at a time (no simultaneous read), so migration jobs that all reference the same Volume will run sequentially. This can be a potential bottle neck and does not scale very well to large numbers of jobs. For disk Volumes, multiple simultaneous Jobs can read the same Volume at the same time, so the above restriction does not apply.

Available as of version 10.0.0

Since Bacula Enterprise version 10.0.0, most plugins are compatible with Copy/Migration jobs. Please refer to a plugin’s specific documentation for more information.

See an example migration job: