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Inherited a Bacula setup? A file backup the whole team can run

Bacula and Bareos are solid, free and do things Arkame does not. In return, they need someone who knows the Director, the catalog and the configuration files. If that person has left the company, this page is for you.

Which one is your case

Choose Arkame if whoever looked after Bacula has left

  • You want any authorized person on the team to be able to restore a file: in the browser, by name or by date, with no console and no command.
  • You do not want to maintain a backup server: not the Director, not the catalog database, not the configuration files. A small program is installed on each server, and the rest is the panel.
  • You want an email when a backup fails or a server stops responding, without configuring that.
  • You want retention ready-made, in tiers (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly), and to see on screen what you can recover from each period.
  • You want the files in your cloud account, one by one, with their original name and folder, readable without Arkame and without a catalog.
  • You want to pay a flat price per server (US$ 5 a month; R$ 25 in Brazil), with no contract.

Choose Bacula or Bareos if you have someone to run them

  • You write to tape, or you want tape, disk and cloud in the same system (bareos.com, Oct 5). Arkame only writes to S3-compatible cloud storage.
  • You have someone who knows the tool, and it is working. Both are open source and charge no license fee (bacula.org, Oct 5) (bareos.com, Oct 5); support and maintained packages are optional.
  • You need what Arkame does not do: virtual machines or encryption before the file leaves the server, which Bareos does (bareos.com, Oct 5). Arkame also does not keep the owner or the permissions of the files, only their content.
  • Nothing may depend on an outside service: both run entirely inside your network. The Arkame agent depends on the panel to back up.

Smart Retention

You do not write rules. The tiers come ready: one copy per day for the last 6 months, one per week up to 1 year, one per month up to 3 years and, after that, quarterly, half-yearly and yearly copies, up to 10 years. The screen shows the timeline and answers the question that matters: "what if I need a file from 8 months ago?". By default, the current version of every file is always kept, and the cleanup stops and asks for a review if it is about to delete more than half of the versions.

Retention is set per storage (bucket), not per backup plan. If your bucket uses Object Lock, Arkame deletes nothing: what expires the old versions is the rule you set on the bucket itself.

In practice: the day you need a file back

With Arkame

You open the panel in the browser, go to Restore and find the file in three ways: searching by name, browsing the folders or going back to a date on the timeline. You choose which server and which folder it goes to, and what to do if a file with the same name already exists (keep both, overwrite or skip). The file leaves your bucket and goes straight to the server, checked on arrival; progress shows up in History. Two limits: the destination server has to be on, with the agent running, and sending to a server or folder other than the original takes an owner or administrator with two-step verification.

With Bacula and Bareos

With Bacula, restore is done with the restore command in the console (bconsole), which the manual gives as the recommended way: you choose the type of restore, select the jobs and walk the file tree marking what you want. By default, the files go back to the same machine, into the /tmp/bacula-restores folder, and not to the original place (bacula.org, Oct 5). If that backup’s file records have already been pruned from the catalog, the command cannot find the files to list (bacula.org, Oct 5). There are web interfaces: the Bacula documentation points to Bacularis and Bacula-Web (bacula.org, Oct 5), and Bareos has the WebUI, with a restore module that lets you pick files and versions (docs.bareos.org, Oct 5).

Side by side

Sources checked between October 4, 2026 and October 5, 2026; each one shows its day next to it. Other products’ prices in the currency of the official page. Bareos prices in euros, as on the official page. Bareos started in 2010 as a fork of Bacula 5.2 (docs.bareos.org, Oct 5); that is why the two columns look alike.

FAQ

Can I take the Bacula history over to Arkame?

No. Arkame does not read Bacula or Bareos volumes or tapes. The way is to run both in parallel: Arkame starts keeping the files from today, and Bacula stays on, for restores only, until the old history is no longer needed. Do not turn off the catalog before that: it is what knows what is on each volume.

Do I need someone from IT to use Arkame?

To get started, yes, once: someone creates the bucket in the cloud and runs the install command on each server. Day to day, no: checking whether the backup ran and restoring a file are done in the browser. It is the opposite of what the Bacula project itself warns about: it does not recommend Bacula to those without experience with a sophisticated backup system (bacula.org, Oct 5).

Does Arkame write to tape or to my local storage?

To tape, no. To local equipment, only if it offers S3-compatible storage and keeps versions of the files (a MinIO, for example). If tape is a requirement, stay with Bacula or Bareos.

Try it on your server

Sign-ups open a few at a time: join the waitlist and we’ll reach out as soon as a spot opens up for you. Backups go to your bucket, with your keys.

Join the waitlistSee Arkame pricing