Tape custody – means what, retention policy or storage of the tape when not in the drive/juke?
Amanda is not an archiver in the sense that the tapes are cycled on a regular basis. You are able to tape a tape out of rotation and replace it, or create a unique tape label and perform level 0 backups to it and then mark it as no-reuse in the tapelist, but the primary function is not long term archiving, though the tools exist to do that very well. You can use the same tape pool for all three Amanda configs, but they will need to have a common tapelist file. But if you are doing that then you are selecting a single set of standards for your data-at-rest security, in which case there is little reason to maintain 3 different configs. Each Amanda config will look to level nightly data, but you will have nights with relatively little and nights with relatively large data volume swings, er think wave interference from physics. You eliminate a lot of that by combining disklists into a single configuration. Amanda will backup a new DLE at level 0 the first time it sees it. If you are worried about running long you will want to phase in the DLEs across several evenings. You may want to add the largest on Friday night, assuming that no one cares how late Amanda runs into Saturday. You will want to avoid adding multiple large DLEs on a single night, add a large and a small each night until they are all added. You may want to think about your dumpcycle, 1 week, 2 weeks? Depends on your tapecycle (number of tapes in the pool) as well as your business requirements. You want multiple level 0 dumps of each DLE in the pool, you want the level 0 dumps to be relatively frequent as it simplifies the restore process should you need to run it (you remember the text book procedure for restoring TAR/DUMP backups). From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Cuttler, Brian R (HEALTH) Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2018 11:44 AM To: Chris Miller <[email protected]>; amanda-users <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Configuration confusion ATTENTION: This email came from an external source. Do not open attachments or click on links from unknown senders or unexpected emails. You can run amanda multiple times per night, and each config can specify a different, MUST specify a different set of tape labels, different tape pools. But I don’t believe you can run multiple amanda servers concurrently. Could you run your tapes with the highest security level so that DLEs can intermix on the output tape? I believe that selection of encryption data-in-motion (vs on tape data-at-rest) can be configured per DLE, if not then certainly by host. From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of Chris Miller Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2018 11:33 AM To: amanda-users <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Configuration confusion ATTENTION: This email came from an external source. Do not open attachments or click on links from unknown senders or unexpected emails. Hi Folks, I now have three working configs, meaning that my test configuration can backup three clients. I still can't tell what is happening, but that is a topic for a different thread. There is not much difference among the configs; in fact the only difference is the src (contents of "disklist") and the dst ("tapedev"). So, I have three clients, but the way I have configured AMANDA, I am running three copies of AMANDA, none of which knows what any other is doing. They will quite probably schedule level 0 backups on the same run, meaning I lose the smoothing benefit of the scheduler, which wants to try to make the nightly backup task approximately equal in terms of storage and network bandwidth consumption. However, I recognize that I'm asking a single copy of AMANDA to do multiple backups each night, and this might not be something AMANDA was designed to do. I don't know, being relatively inexperienced. The config specifies the src and dst of the backup where src is a set of DLEs and dst is single tapedev. I think I want a single config that recognizes multiple (src to dst) mappings, and AMANDA can make backup level decisions knowing the full scope of the problem for that cycle. Given that I have fewer clients than backup-cycles, I can space my level 0 backups so that I never do more than one on any given night. I can fear that AMANDA will schedule everyone for level 0 and backups are still proceeding the next day! That would be disruptive and embarrassing. I think what I'm asking is if I can backup a set of DLEs to a single tapedev, and have a single copy of AMANDA run multiple backups each night? I can't mix clients on the backup media, since each has different security and custody requirements, and I think I'd like AMANDA to be aware of the complete set of tasks for any given night without coming into conflict with AMANDA doppelgangers, unless I'm inventing problems that don't exist and there is no problem running multiple copies of AMANDA. I may be looking to solve a non-problem, meaning that running multiple copies of AMANDA each night is not a problem and hearing, "That is not a problem." from those who know would be comforting. Thanks for the help, -- Chris. V:916.974.0424 F:916.974.0428
