Volumes, pools & auto-labeling

Backup data is written to Volumes (disk files, cloud objects or tapes), grouped into Pools. NGBackup can manage the whole lifecycle for you — creating, labeling, recycling and pruning volumes automatically.

Pools

A Pool defines a set of volumes and the rules around them: how many, how big, how long to keep them, and when to reuse them. Common setups use separate pools for Full, Differential and Incremental backups. Every option is in the Pool resource reference.

Auto-labeling

You never have to label volumes by hand. With automatic labeling, NGBackup creates and names a new volume on demand using a label format:

Pool {
  Name = "FilePool"
  Label Format = "Vol-"        # auto-creates Vol-0001, Vol-0002, …
  Maximum Volume Bytes = 50G
}

On the Storage Device, Label Media = yes lets the daemon label blank media automatically. Storage is allocated, named and recycled with no operator action.

Recycling & retention

Volumes are reused automatically once their data has expired, governed by three retention periods (set on the Pool/Client):

Retention	Controls
Volume Retention	How long a volume’s data is kept before it can be recycled.
Job / File / Job Retention	How long job and file records stay in the catalog.
Recycle / AutoPrune	Whether expired volumes are pruned and reused automatically.

With Recycle = yes and AutoPrune = yes, the system keeps itself tidy — old volumes are pruned and returned to the pool when needed.

Inspect & maintain

* list volumes
* list pools
* status storage

Lower-level tools: backup-ls (list a volume’s contents), backup-scan (rebuild the catalog from volumes), backup-copy (copy/migrate between pools). See the CLI tools and the Storage / Device references.