On Saturday 01 October 2016 12:39:58 Clive Menzies wrote: > On 01/10/16 17:22, Gene Heskett wrote > > > Yeppers! It runs in the wee hours of the night here, for an hour or > > so. Currently backing up this machine, and 3 more on my little home > > network here, using its own unique, distribute the nightly load to > > equalize as much a it can given its list of what to back up with > > nightly backups totaling 11 to 14 Gb per night. > > Hi Gene > > Quick question. Are your backups incremental or complete every night? > > Regards > > Clive
This is probably better explained in the manpages. Amanda has the concept of doing a full backup of everything in its disklist according to the days you give it. Amanda will then shuffle the schedule such that those full backups are done at random in that cycle, with an eye toward equalizing, as much as possible, the amount of data saved during each run. It does this by advanceing the the level 0's as it will not let a given file go beyond that cycle before a full copy is made again. Level 0 is a full copy of a file, level 1 is whats been changed in that file since the last level 0. Level 2 is whats been changed since level 1, ad infinitum but most useage never gets past level 2. I have the drive I use for amanda setup as 30 virtual tapes, using one a day, then recycle. With 4 machines feeding amanda, that 1Tb drive stays at around 46% used: gene@coyote:~$ df /amandatapes Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sdc2 960798056 410555684 501429932 46% /amandatapes I stayed on the devel branch of amanda, playing the part of the canary in the coal mine for years while it was being heavily developed, but apparently that grant ran out so not a lot has changed in around 5 years. So while I have a self made, slightly newer version on this machine as master, v3.3.7p1, the slaves are all running 3.3.1 clients from the wheezy repo. And it Just Works(TM). I would be the first to point out that my way is NOT for archival storage due to this 30 day and recycle setup. I could extend it to 60 days on this drive I suppose, but this is not a business. For a business, I would include the price of the drive as a CODB, fill it up and put it on the shelf at a remote location so it doesn't all go up in smoke when the place burns, thereby giving me the ability to recover something 5+ years old, or for however long one has had that setup running. That $100 or less a month for a new commodity drive is far less of a CODB than the archival storage of tapes would be over a 10 year period. And you would have to add in that the tape drive(s) would be out of service for about a month each annually while they spend the holidays in Oklahoma City getting fresh heads and rubber at about a kilobuck each for the rebuild. Thats been the track record here in my usage of tapes. The hard drives all have been 10x (or) more dependable. And all it takes is getting rid of the idea that one must do a full backup on Friday nights. Yes, amanda can do that, but do it as a separate configuration else you will drive the poor girl out of her mind when she finds out all her carefully worked out plans have all gone aglay. And don't forget that in ones long term business plans, the technology changes with time and there will come a time when you will have nothing in the house that can read todays 1Tb sata hard drive. So having a storage location to save the old tech that can read those drives should be part of that long term plan also. And be damned hard headed about it. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>