I am about to deploy Amanda for a customer, and there are some concerns that the end-users responsible for inserting the correct tapes may not be up to the task.
In detail:
- users will not read the daily email telling them which
tape is expected and want to have a scheme as simple as
possible
- users will not understand that 18 tapes make a 3 week cycle
(assuming weekday backups only). Ie, the 'a few extra tapes'
may be confusing
- Amanda's way to say 'a new tape' will confuse the use if they actually
read the emails. They will want to be told exactly which tape
to insert (or better deduct using dead simple reasoning)
- should a tape need to be skipped (for whatever reason) and
eg tape 15 follow tape 13, thsi will later confuse the users as
the sequence will get jumbled.
We obviously want to hold to a minimum support questions regarding which tape
is to be used andwhy is the sequence not like ...
My boss sugegsted a simple scheme of Week 1 Monday Week 1 Tuesday thru Week 3 Thursday Week 3 Friday
I understand that Amanda's way of labelling and rotating tapes in a non fixed manner is superior, but may be beyond the users' grasp.
Amanda is, as far as I've understood, not designed for these kinds of scenarios.
As I see it, you have two "good" options:
1: Write the Amanda labels on the stickers, and tell them to change tapes as they are told by the daily e-mails. If asked by anybody how the tapecycle really works, mumble something about magic. I fail to see how users could be confused operating a system that tells them exactly what to do and when. :-) In fact, you could probably make a relatively simple script which would simply display on the computer screen what tape is expected next in case logging in for checking e-mail is too time consuming and/or complicated.
2: Use a far less complex a solution than Amanda, such as running gnutar or dump in a cron job, writing it to tape. Optionally include an "Amanda-like" tape label in the front of the tape to check for human error. This requires the user to understand the system in order to operate it. Sure, it's very simple, but it's still more difficult than just telling them to "put in the tape that the computer tells them to".
To conclude: What's the problem in asking users to read an e-mail and simply choose the tape to insert into the drive based on that? And is it really up to the end user to understand all the details underlying their systems, and the responsibility for a system administrator to dumb them down to something inferior just to make them more "understandable"?
-- Per von Zweigbergk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
