Bacula - Enterprise Network Backup Server for AWS

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.

## Production-Ready Bacula Backup and Recovery

Deploy a complete, security-hardened enterprise backup server on your own EC2 instance in minutes - not hours. Bacula is a mature open source network backup system, widely deployed since the early 2000s and trusted across industries for heterogeneous network backup. This AMI packages the full suite - Director, Storage Daemon, File Daemon, bconsole, and an on-box PostgreSQL catalog - as a single, self-contained appliance. It eliminates the manual multi-daemon configuration, catalog setup, and password wiring of a bare install, and avoids the per-gigabyte and per-agent fees of managed backup services.

## Why Choose This Over Managed Services or Manual Installs?

Unlike managed backup services that charge per agent or per GB, this appliance runs on infrastructure you own, with no capacity tiers beyond the EBS volumes you attach. Unlike a manual Bacula install - where you configure each daemon relationship, wire catalog passwords, and harden network bindings yourself - this AMI completes all of that automatically on first boot. Teams protecting 5 to 100+ Linux and Unix hosts use this approach to keep backup costs predictable while retaining full control of schedules, retention policies, and where backup data physically lives.

## Secure by Default - No Shared Credentials Ever Ship

Bacula's stock package installers bake a shared set of daemon and catalog passwords into every install. This image never ships them. On first boot the appliance generates fresh, per-instance secrets for every daemon relationship (Director, Storage, File, and their monitors) and for the catalog database, builds a brand-new catalog, and only then starts the daemons. No two instances share a credential. Every daemon binds to the loopback address by default and the catalog is reachable only on loopback, so nothing backup-related is exposed until you deliberately open it. The backup daemon ports are closed in the shipped Security Group - you decide which trusted client networks may reach them.

## Dedicated, Independently Resizable Data Volumes

The catalog database and backup volumes each live on their own dedicated EBS volume, kept separate from the OS disk and mounted by filesystem UUID for stability across reboots. You can grow backup storage, snapshot it, or move it without touching the OS.

## Ready to Use in Minutes

A per-instance credentials file is written on first boot with the appliance's unique secrets and the exact commands to operate it. The appliance runs a real self-backup job out of the box so you can prove backup and restore immediately, then extend it to your other hosts. The included user guide covers adding remote clients, opening daemon ports to trusted networks, and configuring retention.

## Architecture Overview

The appliance runs all Bacula components on a single instance: the Director (scheduling and coordination), Storage Daemon (writing backup volumes to a dedicated EBS device), File Daemon (local backup agent), bconsole (CLI management), and PostgreSQL catalog (job and file metadata on its own EBS device). All inter-daemon communication is loopback-only until you open ports. Remote File Daemons on your other hosts connect inbound to the Director and Storage Daemon ports once you allow them in your Security Group.

## Deployment on AWS

Place the appliance in a private subnet, attach larger EBS volumes as your backup footprint grows, restrict inbound traffic to your client subnets via Security Groups, and snapshot the data volumes for off-instance retention. Recommended instance type is m5.large or larger.

## Source Availability

This product includes Bacula, licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3. The corresponding source is available with 'apt-get source bacula-director' on the instance and from the Bacula project at bacula.org. The verbatim licence text and a written source offer are baked into the image under /usr/local/share/cloudimg-bacula.

## Use Cases

• Fleet backup for 10-100 Linux hosts - Point File Daemons on your EC2 fleet at this Director, schedule nightly fulls with hourly incrementals, retain on-instance, and snapshot to a second region for redundancy
• Database and application data protection - Back up database dumps, application artifacts and configuration state to file-based volumes, and restore individual files or full datasets from the catalog
• Disaster recovery with defined RPO and RTO - Maintain point-in-time backups on dedicated EBS volumes, snapshot and copy to another AZ or region, and validate recovery regularly with the built-in self-backup job

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