On Mon March 31 2003 17:00, Thomas Hu wrote:
>Gene made some points but not all I agree with.
>
>Friendly user interface (not necessary "fancy" GUI) is a measure
> of all good quality software products. Amanda is not beyond the
> scope of this view.
>
>Amanda is client-server based product. This means, while its
> client might be in "bare" OS, amanda server is not. The server
> has to be fully functioning to provide the data
> recovering/restoring service.

With which I respectfully disagree. Yes, its no doubt much nicer to 
do if the server is up and functioning.  My point was that in the 
event of a meltdown, the recovery can be done with nothing more 
than mt, tar (or dump), gzip and dd.  IMO, we as admins, even if in 
my case its just my home machines, should be able to open the 
toolbox and get out the appropriate digital monkey wrenchs and fix 
it.  Not being locked into a proprietary tape format is IMO a huge, 
overriding advantage.

>In terms of management of amanda, I appreciate all efforts that
> have been put into the product to make it less demanding for
> human intervention however, it is still a client/server
> architecture involving many resources and objects. Initial
> configuration, though one time, takes some time. The difficulty
> of getting used to it has been reflected in this mailing list.
> For a changing (amount of data, schedule, tape devices)
> environment, managing amanda does not seem to be a piece of cake.
> As far as I am concerned, Bernd's presented a good question if we
> look at it as a bigger picture rather than as a stupid question
> from a lazy and less knowledgeable admin.
>
>I am not initiating a fire. Forgive me if it would irritate some
> of you.

NP Thomas, we're all entitled to our opinions, and those were mine.  
Probably worth somewhat less than what you paid for them. :)

Heck I like eye candy too, but didja ever actually try to USE Arkeia 
to recover?  It not all that intuitive either even if it does have 
all them fancy lamborgheni(sp) guages.  The one time I needed it, 
it decided it needed a $2500 license file before it would access 
the tape drive after loading its own bootstrap from the tapes 
header.  I never even bothered to email them about it, the email 
would have self-destructed enroute.  That was an eye opener. 8-(  
And now you know why I'm here.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP@1400mhz  512M
99.25% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
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Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.