On Wed, 10 Oct 2012 Charles Curley wrote:
However, I suspect that swapping out the vtape drive will cause problems for amanda. For example, if you try a restore but the file to be restored is on the swapped out disk, amanda will likely get confused. It will be looking for a vtape that isn't there.
Actually, this setup (except the 'amcheck -m' part) has been in use for years and swapping disks has not caused any problems (other than remote operators occasionally forgetting to change the disk on time and dumps going to holding disk). Restores are rare enough so I don't remember if restoring from a vtape that is on the 'other' disk has been tried, but I don't see why it would cause any more serious problem than Amanda reporting 'tape not found', followed by a facepalm from the operator and connecting the right disk. Mounting the disk for restore needs to be done manually anyway - we normally mount the disk only at the start of amdump run and umount it immediately after amdump.
Dumping to a stationary disk and rsyncing to swappable disks is definitely more advanced and makes for smoother operation, but for our small setup I think the current system is not that bad. Besides, even when rsyncing to swappable disks, someone still has to swap these disks, and rsync does not, AFAIK, have a 'rsynccheck' which could yell at the operator in a way amcheck does ;)
-- Toomas Aas
