Operational Considerations

Quite naturally, a Verify Job consumes time, network bandwidth and CPU cycles. On the client, resource usage during a VolumeToCatalog verification is much less than when running a backup, as the file system is not accessed for each file verified, and no files are read as during a backup.

The main resources used for this verification are the catalog database and the storage device needed to read the job data. The critical element, typically, is the storage device which is unavailable for other tasks during Verify Jobs. For that reason, Bacula Systems recommends to run Verify Jobs outside the regular backup time window, so backup jobs are not negatively affected.

It is also possible to not run these Verify Jobs daily or after each backup, but only at selected times. One useful approach is to verify the jobs that have data stored on volumes that are to be removed for off-site storage. Implementing such a scheme might require a bit of additional scripting, but may be a valuable addition to existing volume handling procedures.