I agree, but the caveat is that the planner will do its darndest to make full use of the extended capacity of the LTO4 cartridge.
In my case, our backups went from between 5 and 8 hours with LTO2 tapes to well over 24 hours in some cases with the LOT4s - same DLEs. It took some fancy footwork to get it to a reasonable window (about the same length of time as with the 2s but some of the larger DLEs are forced to incremental on weekdays). This is so we can get the cartridges ready for pickup by our offsite storage provider. Steve Onotsky Server Support Technologist Broadridge Investor Communication Solutions, Canada 5970 Chedworth Way Mississauga ON L5R 4G5 Tel: (905) 507-5328 Fax: (905) 507-5312 Inet: steve.onot...@broadridge.com Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347 -----Original Message----- From: owner-amanda-us...@amanda.org [mailto:owner-amanda-us...@amanda.org] On Behalf Of Chris Hoogendyk Sent: May 14, 2009 12:53 To: amanda-users@amanda.org Subject: Re: Amanda and dual tape libraries. McGraw, Robert P wrote: > I have a tape library (38) unit with one lto2 tape unit and one empty > tape slot. > > I need to speed up our backups. > > One option is to purchase a second tape unit but not sure how Amanda > works with a two tape drives. I searched the wiki for information but > did not get any hits. > > I am going to upgrade to the latest Amanda version so the version should > not be a problem. > > Can Amanda use multiple tape drives for a backup? I want to put complete > backup files on a tape and not strip the tapes. If you are looking for speed and thinking of upgrading, then why not get an LTO4 drive to put in your library and switch to that? Assuming your backup system can drive it at full speed, that would be 3 times as fast as the LTO2 drive and would be able to read the LTO2 tapes. Of course, it would require transitioning to LTO4 tapes, but that's going to give you 4 times the capacity. Another option is larger holding disks (or a holding array), backing everything to there on its way to the tape. Do your backup reports indicate that the taping speed is the bottleneck? My library is AIT5, which isn't as fast as LTO. When a DLE is being written to tape, my system can drive the tape at full speed. However, the tape drive spends a lot of time idle, as the bottleneck on my system is traffic over the network and the busyness of the other servers that are being backed up. I have large enough spool drives that the backup activity is going to until it accumulates and is ready for taping. -- --------------- Chris Hoogendyk - O__ ---- Systems Administrator c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center ~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst <hoogen...@bio.umass.edu> --------------- Erdös 4 This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system.