Michael, > 1) catalog (indecies) > It seems the main catalog/database is stored in the index files. Is it > straightforward to back these up? > This doc (http://www.zmanda.com/protecting-amanda-server.html) sugests > backing up these dirs/files to be able to restore an amanda > configuration (and presumably the backup catalog): /etc/amandates, > /etc/dumpdates, /etc/amanda, /var/lib/amanda.
Many years ago, I wrote a Perl script that will rsync that to a different machine an email me the contents of amadmin export. Knowing that the mail is automatically being replicated on a mail backup machine (and forwarded to my gmail account). I am pretty sure the information is safe. > 2) Spanning and parts > Say I split my 32TB of data into DLE's of 2-3TB. > > a) If I set a 'part' size of 150GB (10% of native tape capacity is > what I saw recommended), what is the format of each part as it's > written? Is each part its own tarfile? Seems that would make it easier > to restore things manually. Nothing is written as a tar file, but as an Amanda backup file (there is a few bytes header before the tar file). I am not sure about splited backup. > b) If a part spans two volumes, what's the format of that? Is it a > single tarfile that's split in two? > > c) What's the manual restore process for such a spanned part? cat the > two parts together and pipe to tar for extraction? > > 3) Restoring w/out Amanda > I thought data was written to tape as tar files. But this page > suggests a dumpfile is only readable by Amanda apps. Is a dumpfile > something else? > http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Dumpfile For a single file DLE, you have to use dd to remove the few bytes header and you are left with a pure tar/dump file. > 4) holding disk and flushing > I see how flushing can be forced when the holding disk has a certain % > of tape size. > Can a flush be forced every N days? The idea here would be to get data > to tape at a min of every week or so, should successive incrementals > be small. > > 5) alerting > Is there a provision for email and/or other alerts on job completion > or error, etc? Yes, Amanda sends nice summary emails at the end of a dump. Best regards, Olivier > Thanks! > > -M
