On Sun, Feb 09, 2020 at 05:47:46 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> amcheck is again happy, and since a df now shows that now empty disk as
> haveing 896702760 1k blocks free, it ought to have all the room it
> needs, and I'm reasoning the original /usr/dumps holding disk can be
> commented out.
>
> However, since I'm also backing up 4 other machines whose "spindles" are
> out on the net and can and do run in-parallel, is the removal of the old
> default a good idea? That would, depending on the scheduling, have 5
> dumpers writing to the same spindle again.
I am not sure we can give a definitive answer to that question...
Off hand I would suspect that the single disk drive is fast enough to
handle all the traffic as it comes in over the network, especially if
it's a decently modern drive attached via direct SATA link and you have
a reasonable amount of RAM available for buffering/caching. If so, your
total backup-run time would be about the same with just the one drive.
On the other hand, it's certainliy true that if you have two drives in
use for holding disk files then the total amount of drive-head movement
is reduced (since each drive doesn't have to move back and fourth
between as many different files), compared having just one drive
(assuming spinning-platter drives, obviously). So if you are worried
about your sdb drive's lifespan, it makes sense to keep /usr/dumps in
the mix. (On the other hand, if sdb is only used for the holding disk
while sda is important because it contains the active root filesystem,
you might want to push the extra wear onto sdb by commenting out the
/usr/dumps side.)
But without some specific unusual factor in your situation, I'd guess
that it from the drive hardware side of things it probably won't matter
in the end, and you should just go ahead and configure whichever way
seems easiest for you as system administrator....
Nathan
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Nathan Stratton Treadway - [email protected] - Mid-Atlantic region
Ray Ontko & Co. - Software consulting services - http://www.ontko.com/
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