At 04:44 PM 12/16/2002 -0600, Sykora, Dale wrote:

Hello,

I am new to amanda and want to determine if fits my needs. Any pointers are appreciated. Will backup_size>tape_size work? Old backup routine... Weekly full backup on Fri and incremental Mon-Thu. Full~=20Gb"2tapes" and inc~=1Gb. Tape drive is dds3/12Gb. I read that amanda cannot handle backup>tape. So my first assumption is full>dds3 will fail. Elsewhere I read amanda spreads full/partial backups to many tapes. This makes me think full+(5*inc)<(5*dds3) which will pass.

Thanks,       Dale

Amanda doesn't do backups, she merely schedules them.  Backups are
actually done by dump or tar.    But that's nitpicking.   Back to your
questions:
    You tell amanda what node(s) and what file-systems to back up.
A single filesystem cannot be larger than a tape.   You can work
around that, however,  by using tar for large file systems, since
tar can use excludes and includes to backup less than a full
filesystem  at a time.    i.e.  You split up your large filesystem
so that each chunk is NOT bigger than your tape.
     Amanda greatly prefers to spread full backups over the whole
time period you give her  (in your case,  a week).    Thus,
/   and   /usr   might get fulls on one day,  and other filesystems
will get incrementals.    The next day,   /var and /etc might get
a full and all the rest incrementals.     (I'm assuming all the disks
I've mentioned are separate filesystems.)     Thus,   the load
is balanced,   so that roughly the same amount of data goes to tape
each day.     [It'll take  a week or so to initially get things
balanced out.]

Clear as mud?    I hope I've answered the questions you asked.
Others may already be posting better (or worser!)  answers.
Take your pick!
Deb Baddorf
-------------------
Deb Baddorf         baddorf AT fnal DOT gov              840-2289
"You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old."
- George Burns                                          <IXOYE><