On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:10:16PM +0200, Thomas Marko wrote: > Hi! > > I want to setup amanda to backup some important data, but I am afraid > that I do not understand correctly how amanda works inside. I am not > sure if I am doing right or in a best practice way. > > As the amount of data is very large (630GB), thus the backup time would > be very long (especially L0's) I divided the data into data which > changes fast and should be backed up daily (DailySet1) and data which is > very static and should be backed up weekly. The weekly data I also > divided into 4 parts (WeeklySet1-4) so that the runtime of the backup is > shorter.
I'm not sure if it is best to make up 5 distinct Amanda configs, or just one config with customized DLEs and dumptypes. I'd probably try the latter first. I think it would make the best use of your storage media rather than targeting specific amounts for each config. Maybe others will add their views. There are a few things I will comment on below: > > The parameters for DailySet1 are: > > dumpcycle 4 weeks > runspercycle 28 > tapecycle 30 tapes > runtapes 4 > > tapelength 10 gbytes > tape_splitsize 1000 mbytes You are only asking for a single lvl 0 dump every 4 weeks. Dangerous in my view. The days the lvl 0 is done for Documente and WindowsHomes would take 2 and 4 tapes respectively. Some other days may also take multiple tapes. Your 30 tapes will be used before your dumpcycle is finished. And even if you add just a couple of tapes, it is likely that the next lvl 0 will overwrite the older one. If anything happens, (eg. network connection lost, system crash, disk errors, etc.) you will have no lvl 0 remaining. You don't seem to be using a holding disk so you will be writing directly to the vtapes. That increases the likelyhood of trashing something on problems. It also eliminates dumping multiple DLEs in parallel. Rather one after the next will have to run. > > The parameters for the WeeklySet1-4 are: > > dumpcycle 4 weeks > runspercycle 4 > tapecycle 6 tapes > runtapes 4 > > tapelength 50 gbytes > tape_splitsize 10000 mbytes > Mostly the same comments about the number of tapes. Even if you want Daily and Weekly to be different configs, rather than DLEs of one config, consider putting the DLEs from the four weekly configs into a single config. First benefit you get is 24 tapes of the current size. The dumptype could be set to "strategy nofull" (or is it "strategy incronly" ?) and use amadmin "force" commands (from cron) to specify when to do fulls. > I am using Amanda 2.6.1p1-2 on a Ubuntu Lucid distro. Seriously consider moving to the 3.x versions. > > The largest DLE in the daily set is about 30G, that's the reason why I > used 10G tapes and let amanda run 4 tapes. I split the tapes into 1G > chunks to fill the tapes better. > > The largest DLE in the weekly sets is about 180GB, that's the reason why > I used 50G tapes and let amanda run 4 tapes. I split the tapes into 10G > chunks to fill the tapes better. > > I chose to use 30 tapes * 10GB + (6 tapes * 50GB) * 4 to fit the disk > space of 1,8T. > > The keep time of the data does not need to be very long (I do not need > many old versions of specific data). It should be enough to have 2 week > old versions of the backed up data (two runs in WeeklySets and 14 runs > in DailySet). > In my understanding I would need at least L0 dumps every two weeks. To > keep the amount of data small and the time to backup short the amount of > incrementals should be as large as possible. If you want lvl 0's every two weeks, then should to set the dumpcycle to two weeks and the runspercycle appropriately. > > How do I accomplish all my needs with the resources I have? > Is the way I am thinking completely nonsense? > Are there any best practice rules tipps or recommendations for me? > > Beyond I attach my configurations. I removed some default lines, not > needed dumptypes and disktypes and the comments for better readability. > Also I attach the disklists for all my sets. > > I hope that anyone can help me :-) > > Any comments are appreciated. Thanks in advance! If you run your backups on the "ragged edge" of sufficient storage, I would say your (i.e. your mgmt) do not value highly the data that is being backed up. An extra pair of 1-2TB drives would cost about $125-$250. Isn't extra safety of your data worth it? jl -- Jon H. LaBadie [email protected] JG Computing 12027 Creekbend Drive (703) 787-0884 Reston, VA 20194 (703) 787-0922 (fax)
