Hi!
Mitch wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Patrick M. Hausen wrote:
>
> > Unfortunately our customer with the highes capacity needs stores
> > precompressed data of several GB per month and wants them all
> > available on disk. So we need to plan for full dumps of 100 GB
> > and maybe even more. That's why I'd prefer a tape solution that
> > gets 200 GB of data on a tape.
> >
> > For the curious: webserver logfiles - they want at least one
> > year's worth of that available online for analysis ... marketing types ;-)
>
> You _might_ want to consider modifying your strategy here. What
> you're describing is really an archive of static data. Why beat
> your backup hardware/software up over it when it's static logs?
Absolutely correct ... but ...
> How about something like this. At end of each month, move current
> month's logs into your online archive and cut a tape, perhaps with
> duplicates if you prefer the extra security, of just the new bits.
> Add tape to your tape archive. Don't bother making periodic backups
> of data in the archive, since you've already got it on both disk and
> tape, and it's not changing anyway.
This means a separate tape drive and/or manual intevention.
All servers are located in a remote data center -
that's why we want a "change cartridges once a week and forget
about the rest" solution ...
If the customer is willing to buy a separate autoloader instead
of using our standard "data center backup service", we can implement
your suggestion.
And ... the customers wants _yesterday's_ logs available for analysis
today. Together with all accumulated data over the last year up to and
including yesterday. They're using Webtrends Enterprise Reporting -
this software just can't analyze seperate months separately and
give out reports containing the entire period. Still they insist
on using it - it generates "prettier" reports than, say, NetTracker,
and has a "nicer" UI.
There are quite a few other quirks with this product.
If you analyze a year's worth of compressed logfiles, WT
insist on decompressing _everything_ to temporary storage,
then analyzing, then remove the temporary files.
It starts one thread per ip address to reverse-lookup ...
Need I say more? Sun, IBM, Compaq sure like it a lot ;-)))
The customer asks - we suggest and offer - they buy - or don't. I don't
have a problem with that, I'm providing _services_.
But now I'm definitely getting off topic.
> Alternatively, if the above just won't cut it for whatever reason,
> and you want to/have to keep this archival data in your regular
> backup cycle, this seems like one time when the current amanda
> workaround for filesystems too large for one tape will work quite
> well. This being the "use tar and make separate entries in disklist
> for each top-level directory" approach.
Right. Something along this line probably will do the trick.
Getting the biggest tape drive available with current technology
won't hurt, either. ;-)
Thanks,
Patrick
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