Architecture & components

NGBackup is a modern, Rust-native data-protection platform: an all-new codebase written 100% in Rust with zero lines of C, memory-safe by construction, with significantly improved performance and far more features than legacy backup tools. It ships under its own brand-neutral backup-* programs, a single remote control plane, database-backed configuration, token-based enrollment (no clear-text passwords on disk), active/standby high availability, and a friendlier toolset.

A working installation is made of a few small services that talk to each other over the network. You don’t have to run them on the same machine — that separation is exactly what lets NGBackup scale from one server to thousands.

The pieces at a glance

Component	Program	Default port	What it does
Director	backup-dir	9101	The brain. Schedules jobs, applies policies, and coordinates the other services.
Storage Daemon	backup-sd	9103	Reads and writes backup data to disk, S3/object, NFS or tape — with global deduplication, immutability and encryption.
File Daemon	backup-fd	9102	The lightweight agent on each protected machine; streams its data to the Storage Daemon.
Catalog	PostgreSQL	—	The database that records every file, job and volume, so restores are fast.
Console	backup-console	—	The command-line interface to run and watch jobs.
Web console	Web Console	—	The dark-mode web UI: dashboards, policy designer, restore explorer and a Ctrl+K command palette.

One job, three services. A backup flows like this: the Director starts the job → the File Daemon reads the data → the Storage Daemon deduplicates, encrypts and writes it → the Catalog records what happened. Restores run the same path in reverse.

Where things live

Everything installs under /opt/backup/ by default:

Path	Contents
/opt/backup/bin/	All programs (backup-dir, backup-sd, backup-fd, backup-console, …)
/opt/backup/etc/	Configuration files (backup-dir.conf, backup-sd.conf, backup-fd.conf, backup-console.conf)
/opt/backup/plugins/	File Daemon plugins (override with --plugin-dir)

The File Daemon can also run without a config file — fully flag-driven, ideal for automated and container deployments:

backup-fd --fd-address 127.0.0.1 --fd-port 9102 \
          --sd-address 127.0.0.1 --sd-port 9103

Operator toolkit

Program	Use it to…	Bacula equivalent
backup-cli	drive the Director from scripts	—
backup-copy	copy/migrate volumes between pools	bcopy
backup-extract	extract files straight from a volume	bextract
backup-ls	list the contents of a volume	bls
backup-scan	rebuild the catalog from volumes	bscan
backup-dbcheck	check and repair the catalog	dbcheck
backup-dirjson · backup-sdjson · backup-fdjson · backup-consjson	dump any config as JSON	—

How plugins fit in

Workload-specific protection (databases, hypervisors, Microsoft 365, …) is delivered by File Daemon plugins in /opt/backup/plugins/. Enable one in a Content, passing options as key=value pairs:

Content {
  Name = "proxmox-cluster"
  Include {
    Options { Plugin = "proxmox: pve_host=10.0.0.10 vm=* backup_type=full" }
  }
}

Each plugin documents its own backup and restore parameters — including Instant Recovery and cross-hypervisor restore (V2V). See Plugins.

Moving from Bacula? NGBackup ships a migration tool that imports an existing Bacula catalog, volumes and configuration, so you can migrate at your own pace, mixed deployments included. See Migrating from Bacula.