On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 at 03:49:49PM -0400, Joe Konecny wrote: > Gavin Henry wrote: > > >Amanda is much better than that. It will but the backup in a holding disk > >i.e. folder/partition until space runs out or hits the limit you set. > > > >It will not overwrite another tape unless you force it by hand, which > >is good. > > > >You don't have to figure out which tape, amanda tells you. You can even > >browse the backup files like a normal Unix system and restore per file. > > > >You have not spec'd how often you backup either, how much data and much > >more > >if we need to help you. > > > >Read the docs first and look at this site: > > > >http://www.oops.co.at/AMANDA-docs/index.html > > So... is amanda really not made for disaster recovery? That's great > that it will back up to a holding disk with no tape but if the hard > drive dies it's rather meaningless.
I don't understand the leap you've made here. The holding disk is a buffer to allow multiple items to be backed up simultaneously but with a single stream to tape. If no "usable" tape is available amanda will still do the backups but leave them in the buffer (holding disk) for later taping. "Usable" here can mean many things including a tape not part of amanda's collection (do you really want it to trash someone else's valuable data?), an amanda tape not permitted to be overwritten (admin controllable), or even a broken drive or no tape inserted. How does that imply "not for disaster recovery"? What would your current system do if the tape "jammed"? Would it still backup? True, if you encountered a situation where you did not put in a tape AND the holding disk died you would not have a backup. Is that your concern? BTW some amanda installations use cheaper, separate drives for the holding disk. On my primary home office system, the 4 system drives are scsi. My holding disk is an IDE drive bigger than the sum of the scsi drives. Once I went on a week long trip forgetting to insert a new set of tapes. Came home, inserted the tapes and flushed a weeks worth of normal backups on to several tapes. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road (609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)