Bareos 24 will be released in November 2024.
The following features are planned to be part of the release:
Dedupable Storage Backend
This new storage backend stores the backup data in a format optimized for deduplication. This allows Bareos volumes to be deduplicated by storages and filesystems with deduplication support (like ZFS, VDO, btrfs and others). The new command line tool bdedupestimate can estimate the deduplication potential of existing backup volumes, helping users optimize their storage use.
Python Plugin in Separate Process
Bareos supports plugins written in Python. Running the Python interpreter as a so-called “subinterpreter” in the same process space has proven to be error-prone and leads to various undesirable effects. The new approach will run each plugin’s Python interpreter in a separate process, solving all these problems.
Just-in-Time Device Reservation
Up to now, devices are reserved quite early during backup jobs. There can be a long period between the reservation and the first actual write operation. During this time, the device cannot be used for other tasks, even though it is not actually doing anything. With the new just-in-time reservation feature, Bareos changes it by reserving a device only when data is ready to be written. This feature significantly improves the utilization of expensive tape drives.
Support of WORM Tapes
Bareos inherited a mechanism of having a two-phase initialization of tape labels, which was incompatible with WORM (Write Once Read Many) tapes. The new WORM tape support will change the labeling procedure to a single write, allowing users to utilize WORM tapes.
Windows Binaries Built Natively with MSVC Compiler
The Windows binaries of Bareos have been cross-compiled on Linux up to now.
With the new build system, these binaries are built with the common Windows Microsoft Visual C++ compiler, allowing faster binaries and better support of the Microsoft toolchains.
New Cloud Storage Backend
The current Bareos cloud storage backend based on the already unsupported droplet library. Bareos24 will contain a new drop-in replacement backend that is able to read and write in the same format.
Improved Resilience to Network Issues
Unstable network connections can cause cancelling and hanging backup jobs.
By setting up the socket keepalive settings Bareos will be more resilient to network problems.
Various Enhancements for Native NDMP Support
The existing Bareos Native NDMP (Network Data Management Protocol) Support has gained multiple enhancements and bugfixes.
Universal Linux Client for OpenSSL 3 and ARM64
The Universal Linux Client (ULC) is intended for installation on Linux systems for which Bareos does not provide binary packages. As of Bareos 24, the ULC is available with OpenSSL 3 support and also for the aarch64 ARM architecture.
AArch64 Binary Packages for Selected Distributions
Bareos has introduced building and testing aarch64 packages in our CI/CD Pipeline.
Preparations for Large Backups with Over 2 Billion Files
Some of our customers soon reach 2 billion files in a single job. The currently used data type cannot store more than 2.147.483.647 files. With Bareos 24, we will ensure the overflow will be detected, and with Bareos 25 we will support more than this amount of files.