Hi, Here's my (very) small personnal experience:
A few years ago, when I tried it, I couldn't enable server-side software compression while bypassing the holding disk with my IBM ULTIUM LTO-3 drive: Tape speed was sinking to about 5MB/s. My backup server was a Dell PowerEdge 2850 with 4 Intel Xeon 3GHz and 8MB RAM using RHEL-4.0 and amanda-2.4.4p3-1. Maybe did I do something wrong at that time (I just had 1 try). Beware though. Cyrille [email protected] wrote on 14/08/2009 15:57:45: > Hi Chris > > On 13/08/09, Chris Hoogendyk ([email protected]) wrote: > > ... the solution is akin to the Japanese monks caring for Bonzai.... > > I liked this idea about tape archives -- constant pruning and > maintenance. Difficult to sell though. > > > As for your specific questions: > > > > You should be able to do LVM snapshots. I use fssnap on Solaris 9 and > > 10, and scanning through, here are just a couple of references I find > > to people using LVM snapshots with Amanda: > <snip> > > With the latest releases of Amanda, there is a new API that could make > > it even easier to implement. > > Great; thanks for the pointers. > > > Typically, we set up Amanda with holding disk space. > <snip> > > If all the storage is locally attached (actually, AoE drives storage > units connected over Ethernet), I am hoping to avoid the disk space if I > can write to tape fast enough. I'd like to avoid paying for up to 15TB > of fast holding disk space if I can avoid it. > > > Compression can be done either on the client, on the server, or on > > the tape drive. Obviously, if you use software compression, you want > > to turn off the tape drive compression. I use server side > > compression, because I have a dedicated Amanda server that can > > handle it. By not using the tape drive compression, Amanda has more > > complete information on data size and tape usage for its planning. > > If your server is more constrained than your clients, you could use > > client compression. This is specified in your dumptypes in your > > amanda.conf. > > I don't have any clients, so this is an interesting observation. I'll be > trying to do sofware compression then I think. The Unix backup book > (google for "amanda software compression") suggests that compression can > be used on a "per-image basis"; presumably I can pass the backup data > stream through gzip or bzip2 on the way to a tape? > > > Deduplication is not available with Amanda. However, some people > > stage different kinds of tools and use Amanda for the final staging > > and management of tapes and archives. So, in some situations, > > BackupPC could be used to do deduplication from, say, desktop > > clients to a server archive which is then backed up by Amanda. That > > could start complicating your 12 year recovery scenario and what > > happens when software is not available or doesn't run. > > Great -- thanks for the details. > > > Amanda uses the term "index" rather than "catalog" -- see > > http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Amanda_Index. > > > > Note that if you are putting tapes into a long term archive with no > > intent of recycling them in subsequent backups, you can use amadmin > > to mark them as no-reuse. I periodically (typically at the end of > > semesters) do a force full, mark the tapes as no-reuse, and then > > pull them out of my tapecycle and put them in storage. > > Very useful again, thanks. > > Regards > Rory > -- > Rory Campbell-Lange > Director > [email protected] > > Campbell-Lange Workshop > www.campbell-lange.net > 0207 6311 555 > 3 Tottenham Street London W1T 2AF > Registered in England No. 04551928
