Gods of the Internet, Backups be blessed.

Many of us still operate with a steady online businesses thanks to good and regular backups.

Admit it.

And as the great Benjamin Franklin once said,

If you are failing to plan, you are planning to fail.

We at AltusHost, quite recently changed our Backup Partner and switched to Bacula4 (ClusterLogics) And we couldn’t be more pleased with it. Before Bacula4, we’ve used R1Soft Server Backup Manager, which, as a matter of fact, was fine.

But.

Bacula4 turns out to be our most reliable backup sidekick.

Why?

Just to tackle your curiosity, some of advantages that are very important to us:

–  Amazing 24/7 Support team behind Bacula4

– Bacula4 is made by people who are in Web Hosting Business, so the rhetorical question is: Who can better understand problems of Web Hosting Business then people who are in actually it?

– And, pricing model is more than reasonable.

So, what is Bacula4 Software?

In their own words, Bacula4 is a commercial backup and recovery automation solution built on top of the world’s most popular open source engine from bacula.org.

Bacula4 is worldwide recognizable as a solution built on open standards and using open concepts, as a more intelligent way to manage your backup and recovery requirements.

Next to AltusHost, Bacula4 is trusted by thousands of IT professionals and enterprises across the globe to backup and restore their data. The engine is mature, reliable, stable and proven. Scalable, costeffective and flexible, Bacula4 offers you automation with 24/7 Support, and ongoing development and engineering on top of the core open source Bacula engine.

It is more than obvious why we choose Bacula4. Security of our clients’ data with no downtimes is on top of our priorities now and forever.

We found Bacula4 to be an amazing solution because it creates and maintains a full automation and integration suite in a simple way that even junior technicians can quickly manage a complete backup and data recovery strategy for any business.

Aside from that, let us take you on a tour of the 10 reasons we are amazed by Bacula4 Backup and Recovery Solution.

1. Installation and Configuration done in few pretty easy steps

Creation and deployment of clients on Bacula4 is straightforward and significantly easier. Once the process is done, backups can be controlled with Bacula client which is installed on the client machine. This prevents another complexity layer by removing the need to use “schedules/Cron jobs” on the client machine.

2. Scalability 

Because of changing customer needs, systems are bound to either increase or decrease in size. Hence, implementing a backup solution that is scalable as Bacula is — is a significant advantage. If your business is steadily growing, Bacula4 backup and recovery strategies can quickly accommodate with it: from a single computer to systems consisting of hundreds of computers over an extensive network. This is because Bacula4 is modularly designed but integrated to perform as one backup solution.

3. Customer Support you wished upon

We cannot emphasize this more, but Bacula4 Support has an exceptional team behind it. And we, as web host operating with near 15,000 clients all over the world, are pretty much familiar with the fact that Customer Support is one of the main pillars of superb hosting business.

We must say, it feels really good to use a system that leaves us at ease and assures us that every issue will be resolved in shortest time possible. Bacula Support Team is ready to solve those backup and recovery related issues and, if bug somehow and somewhere emerges, they will provide you with necessary patches in no time. That’s how cool and professional they are.

4. Customization

In some cases, default implementation may not quite satisfy all our backup and/or data recovery requirements. But they say: No worries. Because, Bacula4 offers a scripting language that allows you to customize your backups. Additionally, we use this language to incorporate encryption into other backups.

5. Multi-volume backups

Bacula4 has an inbuilt capability to run a backup across multiple volumes. This avoids the need to run a backup on every volume independently which saves time and cost. Also, put this one into your mind, Bacula4 backups can span multiple tapes, you can do more than one backup per tape and optionally, you are allowed to fingerprint each file as it is backed up.

6. Schedule: Multiple jobs run in parallel

At times, you may need to run more than one job at the same time. Of course, you don’t want to spend an entire future waiting for backups to finish one after the other. So, to prevent backup for taking way too long, Bacula4 allows you to schedule a few backups to run in parallel mode.

How does this works?

Super easy. Let’s say that one job takes 5 hours, and another around 3 hours – then the whole backup will take 5 hours, not 8. So, will free to schedule that server and database backup both at 12:00 AM, Bacula4 will do the rest of the hard work for you.

7. A database of all files backed up

Implementing a backup solution for your data is essential. Also, it’s important to see what kind of files you’ve backed up. Bacula4 provides an online easy to use web interface where you can view all your files saved on a particular volume. Bacula4 stands out because it doesn’t restrict you to use only one database management system. It has drivers for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. Such flexibility is a significant advantage and a huge deal for us.

 8. Built in remote administration capability via a shell prompt

We know, most system admins prefer to work from command prompt/shell. And as you already assumed Bacula4 provides it. Command prompt/shell administrative interface allows system admins to perform tasks on Bacula4 backup solution from almost anywhere and anytime.

9. Speed!

Since Bacula4 uses an SQL database to store records of backup information, it’s quite fast, especially compared to backup solutions that store catalog information in individual files.

10. Automatic removal of old records

Bacula4 has tools that allows you to remove old records from database automatically. Imagine having to comb through a years’ backup records given you do a backup incrementally or on a weekly basis – this would be horrible experience. Removal of old records makes the administration process easier and needless to say, saves you bunch of time as well.

When selecting a data backup and recovery solution, the problem isn’t really in finding options.

The problem here is choosing the one that perfectly matches your specific business needs. Bacula4 happens to be that solution for AltusHost.

Not only that is easy to configure and deploy a full backup and recovery suite — even for technicians with some or little experience — but it also comes with a lot of other benefits we proudly presented to you here.

So, at least for now, we don’t seek out for any other backup and restoring software. We have our bat Bacula with us.