On 10/21/2012 07:41 PM, Robert Heller wrote: > At Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:29:30 +0200 Andreas Sundstrom <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I'm probably using quite ancient versions of amanda (using Debian, and >> due to a kerberos problem I'm still on 2.5.2p1). >> Anyway.. >> >> I want to use external disks instead of tapes for my backups. I don't >> like having the disks connected all the time since it would be possible >> for them to be erased when they are connected. >> >> So I would like to use the disks kind of like normal tapes, and swap the >> disk(s) every now and then. >> Each disk could possible house several vtapes of big enough size. >> >> Are there other people running like this, or do I need to figure out how >> to do this on my own? >> What I don't understand after reading the howto-filedriver.txt is if it >> would work when I have multiple vtapes on separate disks and therefor >> only some of the vtapes available at any one time (depending on which >> disk is mounted) > Amanda does not really care if some of the vtapes are actually available > on-line or not. When doing backups, it just looks for the next > available, reusable tape. > > The two (or more) removable disks should be mounted at the same mount > point and have the same basic directory structure. Initialize the > removable disks with a different set of tape labels (using amlabel). > That is, if each removable disks has a virtual tape changer with 10 > tapes (slots 1 to 10), the first removable disk would have those tapes > labeled backupdisk1-1 through backupdisk1-10 and the second removable > disk would have those tapes labeled backupdisk2-1 through > backupdisk2-10, and so on. When amcheck / ambackup runs and if the > first removable disk is mounted, it will backup to > backupdisk1-<mumble> and record this in the logs. When you swap disks, > it will see tapes backupdisk2-1 through backupdisk2-10 and use one (or > more) of these for its backups. Its tape database will still 'know' > about the vtapes on the other backup disk -- this is useful should you > need to do a restore, in which case you might need to swapd disks. > Sounds like everything will "just work" then, I'll set it up and like you described and try it out then. > I have the tapes on my backup disk (and the one at the Wendell Free > Library) set up to be just the right size for burning on DVD-Rs (and the > chunk size set to be compatible with ISO-9660 file system limitations). > I have a Tcl script that 'vaults' (yes, I am using CentOS 5 and also an > older version of amanda) full backups to DVDs. I then relabel the full > backups virtual tapes with new labels (I do this in a way that lets > amanda think the full backups virtual tapes are still arround somewhere > -- they are in the form of DVD-Rs). If you are interested, I can send > you the script. I plan to have 4-5 HD's to rotate around for the backups, and at this time I think that will be enough for me. If I change my mind I'll ask you for your script instead of writing one from scratch.
Thanks very much for your help /Andreas
