>... there's further interest in storing several days worth of
>backups on the holding disk and then flushing them all onto a tape. ...
>... Just wondering if anyone has experience running
>amdump with tapes only once a week to perform full backups, and running
>it without tape on the other days, so that it performs incremental backups
>and stores them in the holding disk which is flushed to tape once
>or twice a week. Does this non-recommended Amanda kluge work? Is recovery
>horrible?
Some people are doing this, but there are issues to keep in mind:
* The "real" amdump run to do the full dumps cannot also do the flush,
so you'll end up using at least two tapes, one for amflush and one
for amdump.
* Keep in mind what will happen if the holding disk dies. All those
incrementals will be lost and you'll have to restore from the most
recent full dump. Depending on your data, that could mean anything
from "no big deal" to "the end of life as we know it" :-).
* As I recall, in this mode Amanda will only do level 1 backups to
the holding disk, i.e. each non-tape amdump will back up everything
changed/new since the full dump. If your data is very active,
that could use up your holding disk faster than you might expect.
* Recovery should be fine. Amrestore/amrecover both know how to
read from the holding disk.
>Pam
John R. Jackson, Technical Software Specialist, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
