Re: Different tapetypes

2005-04-03 Thread Jon LaBadie
On Sun, Apr 03, 2005 at 11:54:34PM +0200, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-04-03 at 00:44 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 10:19:07AM +0200, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 02:06 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > Just for my own interest ...
> > > > 
> > > > Why do you want to do your own scheduling when amanda
> > > > often does a far superior job to human defined scheduling.
> > > 
> > > Hm. I would like to challenge this statement.
> > 
> > I don't normally bite on challenges, but I'll take up this one.
> 
> I don't want to carry this on ad infinitum, but you asked some
> questions.

Thanks for the info.

The CDS product is certainly more sophistocated than what was in use
at the OS/2 shops I visited.  Shame if they dropped it as a product
they did not release the source.


-- 
Jon H. LaBadie  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 JG Computing
 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159
 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322  (609) 683-7220 (fax)


Re: Different tapetypes

2005-04-03 Thread Erik P. Olsen
On Sun, 2005-04-03 at 00:44 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 10:19:07AM +0200, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
> > On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 02:06 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> > > 
> > > Just for my own interest ...
> > > 
> > > Why do you want to do your own scheduling when amanda
> > > often does a far superior job to human defined scheduling.
> > 
> > Hm. I would like to challenge this statement.
> 
> I don't normally bite on challenges, but I'll take up this one.

I don't want to carry this on ad infinitum, but you asked some
questions.
> 
> I hope you read into my statement that I meant amanda vs human,
> both using the amanda 'manager and scheduler' software.  I say
> it that way as amanda is not a backup "program".
> 
> > It may be true if you have a large network of systems to back
> > up but if you only have one system I doubt if it's true.
> 
> Did you miss that amanda is an acronym for:
> 
>Advanced Maryland Automatic NETWORK Disk Archiver

In a way I missed it, actually I never payed attention to it.
> 
> The needs of a site with one system are very different than those
> of a site with a network of systems for which amanda was intended.
> The fact that it can be used very effectively on a single system
> is a testament to its flexible design.
> 
> > Before my switch to Linux I backed up my system
> > (OS/2) on a weekly schedule with one full back-up and four incremental
> > back-ups to one tape only. It worked extremely well, if I crashed my
> > system - which I did very often - it took me about half an hour to
> > recover either using a stand-alone recover program or my maintenance
> > OS/2 if it was alive and I kept an archive of up to 8 weeks of back-ups.
> > Now with Linux and Amanda I use 9 tapes mainly because Amanda won't add
> > today's back-up to yesterday's tape. I could probably do with less tapes
> > but I feel more confident with a large tape pool. 
> 
> On my home site I do have amanda backup more than one system.  But I only
> care about one.  The others are "test" systems.  I will often reinstall the
> OS from scratch on them.  For example, I have HP-UX and Tru64 unix systems
> just because I have clients who use those OS and I like having one available
> to practice with.
> 
> The one host I do care about has about 150GB of disk with about 40GB filled.
> One thing that may be different from your environment is that I've broken it
> down into about 15 DLE's.  By keeping the DLE's small individually, amanda's
> scheduler can balance when to do level 0's of each DLE throughout the 
> dumpcycle
> and lets me do daily backups to a single DDS3 tape.  Even when I've downloaded
> a couple of new CD's, amanda adjusts and rebalances its schedule seldom
> requiring two tapes in a day.
> 
> I have not worked with OS/2 for over a decade.  From that experience I recall
> a backup "program", analogous to dump or tar.  I don't recall a backup 
> "system"
> one that for example tracked the tapes used and reused them in the correct 
> order,
> maintained indexes of files on which tapes, had interactive or batch recovery,
> dynamically and automatically adjusted for missed backups or tape errors,
> allowed for flexibility in time between level 0's on a file system by file 
> system
> basis, adjusted the incremental level based on the amount of change in the 
> file
> system, ...  The OS/2 backup program I remember did nothing more than I can do
> with dump and a little shell scripting.  Was there a backup "system" added to
> OS/2 of which I'm unaware?  What features of that system did you find useful?

I have been using BackAgain/2 by cds inc. They were bought by Intradyn a
year or two ago and by then the OS/2 version was dropped.

You define a schedule to it which would specify on which time of the day
a specific back-up set should run. The set would specify full or
incremental back-up of one or more drives (partitions). In the process
of doing the back-ups a catalogue of the backed-up files was also
created and related to the tape used and the file no. on the tape as one
back-up set would occupy one tapefile. I would usually leave the tape in
the streamer so when the week was over this tape would keep alle the
back-ups from that week. I had it arranged so that the last back-up of
the week would also eject the tape when it had finished. The tape was
then deposited on a remote location.

The corresponding restore would start with displaying the back-up
catalogue which would show all known tapes with dates for when they were
created (had the first back-up written to it). If you select a tape you
would get a list of all back-up sets on that tape again with timestamp
for when they were written. Selecting a particular back-up set would
then expand into the paths and filenames that were backed up by this
set. After selecting files (all or some) the restore operation could
start provided you had the correct tape mounted.

If for some reason BackAgain/2 would not run to do the restore, a stand
a

Re: Different tapetypes

2005-04-02 Thread Jon LaBadie
On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 10:19:07AM +0200, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 02:06 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> > 
> > Just for my own interest ...
> > 
> > Why do you want to do your own scheduling when amanda
> > often does a far superior job to human defined scheduling.
> 
> Hm. I would like to challenge this statement.

I don't normally bite on challenges, but I'll take up this one.

I hope you read into my statement that I meant amanda vs human,
both using the amanda 'manager and scheduler' software.  I say
it that way as amanda is not a backup "program".

> It may be true if you have a large network of systems to back
> up but if you only have one system I doubt if it's true.

Did you miss that amanda is an acronym for:

   Advanced Maryland Automatic NETWORK Disk Archiver

The needs of a site with one system are very different than those
of a site with a network of systems for which amanda was intended.
The fact that it can be used very effectively on a single system
is a testament to its flexible design.

> Before my switch to Linux I backed up my system
> (OS/2) on a weekly schedule with one full back-up and four incremental
> back-ups to one tape only. It worked extremely well, if I crashed my
> system - which I did very often - it took me about half an hour to
> recover either using a stand-alone recover program or my maintenance
> OS/2 if it was alive and I kept an archive of up to 8 weeks of back-ups.
> Now with Linux and Amanda I use 9 tapes mainly because Amanda won't add
> today's back-up to yesterday's tape. I could probably do with less tapes
> but I feel more confident with a large tape pool. 

On my home site I do have amanda backup more than one system.  But I only
care about one.  The others are "test" systems.  I will often reinstall the
OS from scratch on them.  For example, I have HP-UX and Tru64 unix systems
just because I have clients who use those OS and I like having one available
to practice with.

The one host I do care about has about 150GB of disk with about 40GB filled.
One thing that may be different from your environment is that I've broken it
down into about 15 DLE's.  By keeping the DLE's small individually, amanda's
scheduler can balance when to do level 0's of each DLE throughout the dumpcycle
and lets me do daily backups to a single DDS3 tape.  Even when I've downloaded
a couple of new CD's, amanda adjusts and rebalances its schedule seldom
requiring two tapes in a day.

I have not worked with OS/2 for over a decade.  From that experience I recall
a backup "program", analogous to dump or tar.  I don't recall a backup "system"
one that for example tracked the tapes used and reused them in the correct 
order,
maintained indexes of files on which tapes, had interactive or batch recovery,
dynamically and automatically adjusted for missed backups or tape errors,
allowed for flexibility in time between level 0's on a file system by file 
system
basis, adjusted the incremental level based on the amount of change in the file
system, ...  The OS/2 backup program I remember did nothing more than I can do
with dump and a little shell scripting.  Was there a backup "system" added to
OS/2 of which I'm unaware?  What features of that system did you find useful?

> 
> I would add that I haven't yet found out how to keep a repository of
> back-ups of the previous weeks like I was used to with OS/2. I like the
> safe feeling of having a set of back-up tapes from which I know I can
> recreate the system as it was on a specific day. Now I just have my 9
> tapes used in a round Robin fashion.

I too am more confident with a large tape pool, but I have 24 in rotation,
rather than 9.  With that collection I find it simple to recover files as
of a specific date anytime within the last 3-plus weeks.

I'm a keyboard user from wayback.  Literally mice did not exist when I started
with unix.  There are times when I must deal with email using a GUI program like
ThunderBird or (horrors) LookOUT.  They make me use the mouse and I hate it.  I 
go
back to my prefered, mouse-less program, mutt as soon as possible.  I have 
always
felt that one should use what meets their needs and with which they are 
comfortable.


Amanda is certainly not the answer for every backup requirement.  For one 
current
client I'm using rsync to meet their needs and comfort level.  Based on your
described use of your backups and your lack of comfort with amanda's scheduler,
might not a set of shell scripts and dump or tar be a suitable, perhaps superior
solution for your needs than amanda?

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 JG Computing
 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159
 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322  (609) 683-7220 (fax)


Re: Different tapetypes

2005-04-01 Thread Gene Heskett
On Friday 01 April 2005 13:49, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
>On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 13:09 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Friday 01 April 2005 03:19, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
[...]
>Last year I had head crash with my two 60 GB disks when they where
> still under warranty. I had them replaced but couldn't wait the 3
> weeks it took, so I had to buy new ones. Last time it happened
> (there were 6 months in between) the tape streamer also died and
> took the tape with it. I'm sure Murphy has a law for that. As a
> consequence I could not restore the system even with a new and well
> functioning tape station in place. Statistically this problem
> should never occur, but it did.
>
And you weren't taunting the happy fun ball?  :-)

>> > It worked extremely
>> > well, if I crashed my system - which I did very often - it took
>> > me about half an hour to recover either using a stand-alone
>> > recover program or my maintenance OS/2 if it was alive and I
>> > kept an archive of up to 8 weeks of back-ups.
>>
>> I was always told that OS2 was stable.  And I stay quite bleeding
>> edge in terms of the kernel I run on this FC2 system, which is
>> also backing up my RH7.3 firewall box.  Currently running
>> 2.6.12-rc1, the smoothest running, snappiest kernel yet in the 2.6
>> series.  I can't recall the last time I actually crashed a running
>> system.  Several months ago in any event.
>
>OS/2 is stable though not as stable as FC3. The frequent crashes
> were mainly because I did a lot of testing with new system
> software.

So do I, new firewire movie camera & a pcHDTV-3000 card.
Which I might add is working flawlessly witu 2.6.12-rc1, but nothing 
later in the mm or realtime pipelines.

>> > Now with Linux and Amanda I
>> > use 9 tapes mainly because Amanda won't add today's back-up to
>> > yesterday's tape.
>>
>> Thats a security risk amanda won't take.  When amanda is done, and
>> has released the drive, there is nothing to prevent someone from
>> removing the tape, and either reinserting it, in which case the
>> tape is rewound and will be totally overwritten, or even the wrong
>> tape might be reloaded.  Either way, amanda has no ironclad
>> assurance that the tape will be sitting in the same position it
>> was left in, ready to append new files to it.  Yes, most drives
>> today can do an 'mt -d/dev/nst0 seof' and hit within a quarter of
>> an inch of it.  But some drives cannot, and that locks amanda out
>> of useing that feature for all users.  At some point, the last
>> legacy drive that cannot do that might die, but we have no idea
>> when that might be...
>
>I suppose the back-up software placed a sort of end-of-tape mark
> after each back-up and just searched for that tapemark when a new
> back-up was about to be run. I've used it for 5 years and it never
> failed. It would even ask for another tape to continue the back-up
> if the first tape ran full.

It does, and it works flawlessly for me with any of the many DDS2 
drives I've had.  However, when that command became generally 
available, I don't know.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.34% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.


Re: Different tapetypes

2005-04-01 Thread Erik P. Olsen
On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 13:09 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Friday 01 April 2005 03:19, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
> [...]
> >Hm. I would like to challenge this statement. It may be true if you
> > have a large network of systems to back up but if you only have one
> > system I doubt if it's true. Before my switch to Linux I backed up
> > my system (OS/2) on a weekly schedule with one full back-up and
> > four incremental back-ups to one tape only.
> 
> If useing tapes, and they are big enough, set the holding disk 
> reserved value to some low percentage like 20%, and only put in a 
> tape once a week, with the autoflush option set in your amanda.conf.
> That will put the whole weeks worth of backups on one tape.  It does 
> have the disadvantage of leaving that weeks stuff subject to a disk 
> failure though.  But thats something I've not had in about 2 years, 
> no failures out of about 7 drives here when they are all spinning.  
> But I'll lose one yet today just because I mentioned it, Murphy is 
> listening. :(

Last year I had head crash with my two 60 GB disks when they where still
under warranty. I had them replaced but couldn't wait the 3 weeks it
took, so I had to buy new ones. Last time it happened (there were 6
months in between) the tape streamer also died and took the tape with
it. I'm sure Murphy has a law for that. As a consequence I could not
restore the system even with a new and well functioning tape station in
place. Statistically this problem should never occur, but it did.
> 
> > It worked extremely 
> > well, if I crashed my system - which I did very often - it took me
> > about half an hour to recover either using a stand-alone recover
> > program or my maintenance OS/2 if it was alive and I kept an
> > archive of up to 8 weeks of back-ups.
> 
> I was always told that OS2 was stable.  And I stay quite bleeding edge 
> in terms of the kernel I run on this FC2 system, which is also 
> backing up my RH7.3 firewall box.  Currently running 2.6.12-rc1, the 
> smoothest running, snappiest kernel yet in the 2.6 series.  I can't 
> recall the last time I actually crashed a running system.  Several 
> months ago in any event.
OS/2 is stable though not as stable as FC3. The frequent crashes were
mainly because I did a lot of testing with new system software.
> 
> > Now with Linux and Amanda I 
> > use 9 tapes mainly because Amanda won't add today's back-up to
> > yesterday's tape.
> 
> Thats a security risk amanda won't take.  When amanda is done, and has 
> released the drive, there is nothing to prevent someone from removing 
> the tape, and either reinserting it, in which case the tape is 
> rewound and will be totally overwritten, or even the wrong tape might 
> be reloaded.  Either way, amanda has no ironclad assurance that the 
> tape will be sitting in the same position it was left in, ready to 
> append new files to it.  Yes, most drives today can do an 'mt 
> -d/dev/nst0 seof' and hit within a quarter of an inch of it.  But 
> some drives cannot, and that locks amanda out of useing that feature 
> for all users.  At some point, the last legacy drive that cannot do 
> that might die, but we have no idea when that might be...
I suppose the back-up software placed a sort of end-of-tape mark after
each back-up and just searched for that tapemark when a new back-up was
about to be run. I've used it for 5 years and it never failed. It would
even ask for another tape to continue the back-up if the first tape ran
full.
> 
> Maybe that should be the subject of a questionaire at some point?
> 
> > I could probably do with less tapes but I feel 
> > more confident with a large tape pool.
> 
> [...]
> 
> I answered this in a previous post.
> 
-- 
Regards,
Erik P. Olsen



Re: Different tapetypes

2005-04-01 Thread Gene Heskett
On Friday 01 April 2005 03:19, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
[...]
>Hm. I would like to challenge this statement. It may be true if you
> have a large network of systems to back up but if you only have one
> system I doubt if it's true. Before my switch to Linux I backed up
> my system (OS/2) on a weekly schedule with one full back-up and
> four incremental back-ups to one tape only.

If useing tapes, and they are big enough, set the holding disk 
reserved value to some low percentage like 20%, and only put in a 
tape once a week, with the autoflush option set in your amanda.conf.
That will put the whole weeks worth of backups on one tape.  It does 
have the disadvantage of leaving that weeks stuff subject to a disk 
failure though.  But thats something I've not had in about 2 years, 
no failures out of about 7 drives here when they are all spinning.  
But I'll lose one yet today just because I mentioned it, Murphy is 
listening. :(

> It worked extremely 
> well, if I crashed my system - which I did very often - it took me
> about half an hour to recover either using a stand-alone recover
> program or my maintenance OS/2 if it was alive and I kept an
> archive of up to 8 weeks of back-ups.

I was always told that OS2 was stable.  And I stay quite bleeding edge 
in terms of the kernel I run on this FC2 system, which is also 
backing up my RH7.3 firewall box.  Currently running 2.6.12-rc1, the 
smoothest running, snappiest kernel yet in the 2.6 series.  I can't 
recall the last time I actually crashed a running system.  Several 
months ago in any event.

> Now with Linux and Amanda I 
> use 9 tapes mainly because Amanda won't add today's back-up to
> yesterday's tape.

Thats a security risk amanda won't take.  When amanda is done, and has 
released the drive, there is nothing to prevent someone from removing 
the tape, and either reinserting it, in which case the tape is 
rewound and will be totally overwritten, or even the wrong tape might 
be reloaded.  Either way, amanda has no ironclad assurance that the 
tape will be sitting in the same position it was left in, ready to 
append new files to it.  Yes, most drives today can do an 'mt 
-d/dev/nst0 seof' and hit within a quarter of an inch of it.  But 
some drives cannot, and that locks amanda out of useing that feature 
for all users.  At some point, the last legacy drive that cannot do 
that might die, but we have no idea when that might be...

Maybe that should be the subject of a questionaire at some point?

> I could probably do with less tapes but I feel 
> more confident with a large tape pool.

[...]

I answered this in a previous post.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.34% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.


Re: Different tapetypes

2005-04-01 Thread Gene Heskett
On Friday 01 April 2005 03:19, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
>On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 02:06 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 08:46:31AM +0200, Belen Isla wrote:
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > I am trying to configure amanda to backup my system and I would
>> > like to use two different types of virtual tapes in a single
>> > configuration file, I mean, I would like to use big virtual
>> > tapes for full backups and smaller ones for incrementals. Is it
>> > possible to use the parameter tapetype twice in the amanda.conf
>> > file? In affirmative case, how can I associate a virtual tape
>> > with the appropriate type?
>>
>> Just for my own interest ...
>>
>> Why do you want to do your own scheduling when amanda
>> often does a far superior job to human defined scheduling.
>
>Hm. I would like to challenge this statement. It may be true if you
> have a large network of systems to back up but if you only have one
> system I doubt if it's true. Before my switch to Linux I backed up
> my system (OS/2) on a weekly schedule with one full back-up and
> four incremental back-ups to one tape only. It worked extremely
> well, if I crashed my system - which I did very often - it took me
> about half an hour to recover either using a stand-alone recover
> program or my maintenance OS/2 if it was alive and I kept an
> archive of up to 8 weeks of back-ups. Now with Linux and Amanda I
> use 9 tapes mainly because Amanda won't add today's back-up to
> yesterday's tape. I could probably do with less tapes but I feel
> more confident with a large tape pool.
>
>I would add that I haven't yet found out how to keep a repository of
>back-ups of the previous weeks like I was used to with OS/2.

Thats in the variable 'tapecycle'.  If you have, say 30 tapes, and a 7 
day dumpcycle, you will have the current, most recent in those last 7 
tapes, but if one of them is defective, then you can back up another 
cycle, up to 3 past historys being available.

I'm useing virtual tapes, 18 of them, with a 4 day dumpcycle, and that 
keeps a 180GB partition on a 200GB disk at about 95% capacity.

>I like 
> the safe feeling of having a set of back-up tapes from which I know
> I can recreate the system as it was on a specific day. Now I just
> have my 9 tapes used in a round Robin fashion.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.34% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.


Re: Different tapetypes

2005-04-01 Thread Erik P. Olsen
On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 02:06 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 08:46:31AM +0200, Belen Isla wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I am trying to configure amanda to backup my system and I would like to use 
> > two different types of virtual tapes in a single configuration file, I 
> > mean, I would like to use big virtual tapes for full backups and smaller 
> > ones for incrementals. Is it possible to use the parameter tapetype twice 
> > in the amanda.conf file? In affirmative case, how can I associate a virtual 
> > tape with the appropriate type?
> > 
> 
> Just for my own interest ...
> 
> Why do you want to do your own scheduling when amanda
> often does a far superior job to human defined scheduling.

Hm. I would like to challenge this statement. It may be true if you have
a large network of systems to back up but if you only have one system I
doubt if it's true. Before my switch to Linux I backed up my system
(OS/2) on a weekly schedule with one full back-up and four incremental
back-ups to one tape only. It worked extremely well, if I crashed my
system - which I did very often - it took me about half an hour to
recover either using a stand-alone recover program or my maintenance
OS/2 if it was alive and I kept an archive of up to 8 weeks of back-ups.
Now with Linux and Amanda I use 9 tapes mainly because Amanda won't add
today's back-up to yesterday's tape. I could probably do with less tapes
but I feel more confident with a large tape pool. 

I would add that I haven't yet found out how to keep a repository of
back-ups of the previous weeks like I was used to with OS/2. I like the
safe feeling of having a set of back-up tapes from which I know I can
recreate the system as it was on a specific day. Now I just have my 9
tapes used in a round Robin fashion.
> 
-- 
Regards,
Erik P. Olsen



Re: Different tapetypes

2005-03-31 Thread Gene Heskett
On Friday 01 April 2005 01:46, Belen Isla wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I am trying to configure amanda to backup my system and I would like
> to use two different types of virtual tapes in a single
> configuration file, I mean, I would like to use big virtual tapes
> for full backups and smaller ones for incrementals. Is it possible
> to use the parameter tapetype twice in the amanda.conf file? In
> affirmative case, how can I associate a virtual tape with the
> appropriate type?
>
>Thanks.
>
>Belén.

I believe that to do that, you would have to setup two seperate 
configs.

However, this leads to the scenario where you are forceably bending 
amanda to a backup framework that it wasn't really designed to 
handle.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Daily]$ amadmin Daily balance

 due-date  #fsorig MB out MB   balance
--
 4/01 Fri7  14973   9433+33.3%
 4/02 Sat8  11697   5147-27.3%
 4/03 Sun   22  12492   7273 +2.8%
 4/04 Mon   10   8521   6449 -8.8%
--
TOTAL   47  47683  28302  7075
DISTINCT44  46519  27687

Amanda has a very good scheduler, and that schedulers task is at least 
2 fold.

1.  Given sufficient storage capacity, it will do a full backup of 
everything in the disklist at no more than dumpcycle days interval.

2.  To that end, amanda will move the schedule for an individual 
disklist entry up in order to fill a run thats quite small otherwise.

The background framework for this scheduling dance comes into play 
after amanda has had time to develop a bit of history for the 
individual disklist entries as amanda juggles things trying to 
achieve a balance of using nearly the same amount of tape (or disk) 
for each run.  After the system has stabilized, its quite common to 
see that it filled the tape to 98% of the tapes capacity last night, 
which is nice, until you also note that it hasn't hit an EOT error in 
a long time.  Then you are rightfully impressed I hope.

If you leave amanda alone, and let amanda work out her own schedule, 
she is capable to doing a much better job than we can when we attempt 
to bend amanda to our will.

After all, if you have a dumpcycle of 7 days, then the recovery will 
need a maximum of 7 days worth of tapes.  But for a specific entry in 
the disklist, that ones level 0 backup might be on last nights tape.  
When you ask it for that, amanda will know which tape contains what 
and the actual amount of tape shuffling to do the recovery is 
probably going to result in each tape being loaded several times 
anyway.

Just let amanda do its thing, its uncommonly good at what it does.

It will help amanda quite a bit if the individual disklist entries are 
much smaller than the tapetype is set for, because in that manner 
amanda can make, over a period of time, quite fine-grained 
adjustments.  I'm using a 200GB disk here, with a 4 day dumpcycle, 
and a balance report tells me amanda hasn't quite settled yet since 
my last adjustment a week ago.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Daily]$ amadmin Daily balance

 due-date  #fsorig MB out MB   balance
--
 4/01 Fri7  14973   9433+33.3%
 4/02 Sat8  11697   5147-27.3%
 4/03 Sun   22  12492   7273 +2.8%
 4/04 Mon   10   8521   6449 -8.8%
--
TOTAL   47  47683  28302  7075
DISTINCT44  46519  27687

The friday run will overflow the tapesize I have set by about 1.5GB, 
so some of that will get pushed off till the saturday run, which has 
plenty of spare space.  However, amanda will not willingly delay 
anything more than 1 day.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.34% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.


Re: Different tapetypes

2005-03-31 Thread Jon LaBadie
On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 08:46:31AM +0200, Belen Isla wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I am trying to configure amanda to backup my system and I would like to use 
> two different types of virtual tapes in a single configuration file, I mean, 
> I would like to use big virtual tapes for full backups and smaller ones for 
> incrementals. Is it possible to use the parameter tapetype twice in the 
> amanda.conf file? In affirmative case, how can I associate a virtual tape 
> with the appropriate type?
> 

Just for my own interest ...

Why do you want to do your own scheduling when amanda
often does a far superior job to human defined scheduling.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 JG Computing
 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159
 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322  (609) 683-7220 (fax)