On Mon, 20 Aug 2001 at 2:34pm, Ramesh Mopidevi wrote > I have configured amanda software successfully.I want to retain the data > which I backup using amanda to be used for 6 months without > recycling.(without over writing the used tapes)For this scheme to work can > any one suggest how should I mention the dump cycle and tape cycle. > You still have a couple of questions to answer: What is the longest period of time you want between full (level 0) dumps? How often will you be running amdump? It's actually only the second of those that affects tapecycle. If, say, you are going to run amdump every weeknight (5 times per week), then you need (5 tapes/week)*(26 weeks)=130 tapes (that's your tapecycle). That may be quite expensive depending on what types of tapes you're using. The first question sets your dumpcycle. If you want, e.g., a full dump at least once every two weeks (the 5 runs per week as above), then you get a dumpcycle of 2 weeks and runspercycle is 10. A second (possibly cheaper) way of doing this is to have two configurations. I have a nightly configuration that uses cheap tapes (8mm Exabyte, non-Mammoth) that has a tapecycle of 60 (3 months worth of daily history). I have a second configuation that runs on big, expensive tapes (Sony AIT-1) and does full dumps on every run. I run that every month-month and a half, and it has a huge tapecycle, i.e. I'll never reuse those tapes. So, in total I have a 3 month history of daily backups, and a full history (since when I started) of monthly backups. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
