Bacula – Free Open Source Network Backup Software

Bacula, a free network backup software manages backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across a network of cross platform computers. This network backup software is suitable for those system administrators that manage multiple computer backups over their corporate network. 

Besides being able to back up to a hard disk, it can also backup to a tape drive (a list of supported tape drives is given on their site). Plus more, Bacula network backup client tools works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix-type systems (including FreeBSD).  

Basic Bacula Components and Services

The three major services Bacula uses are the storage director (bacula-sd), the file director (bacula-fd) and the director itself (bacula-dir). The storage director facilitates the storage and recovery of data and attributes to physical media. The file director is the client piece which is installed on the machine to be backed up, and the bacula director is the manager and coordinator of all backup job activities. You’ll use the Bacula director (bacula-dir) to configure storage pools, jobs and to automate and schedule backups and the Bacula console (bconsole) to interface with and control it all.

However, Bacula installation requires a database, and that means you will have to install and maintain either a MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite database to use Bacula.

Bacula Network backup Software Features:

• Support for multiple platforms, including Windows clients.
• Use tape and/or disk as storage devices.
• Schedule different jobs at different times/days.
• Backups that can span multiple tapes.
• More than one backup per tape.
• Optionally fingerprint each file as it is backed up.
• Backup catalogs are retained within a database (SQLite or MySQL. There is also a PostgreSQL option in beta).
• Auto-changer support.

If you interested install Bacula as your network backup solution on computer network, here is the download link and installation guidelines