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Re: Proposal: quota limit on backup clients and groupware (Hope to be added on the wishlist)
2003-04-17 16:01:14
Frank Smith wrote:
--On Thursday, April 17, 2003 16:31:17 +0200 Stefano Coletta
<creator AT mindcreations DOT com> wrote:
Hello everybody,
I'm setting up Amanda to work as the global ISP solution for
customers having to backup hosting/housing/spaces/servers.
I've conviced management that this software can be a great solution
avoiding to purchase expensive softwares like Arcserve, Legato,
Tivoli ecc.
Now, while implementing it, I had to deal with a limit of Amanda.
Customers have to pay to be backed up and thus I have to control the
size of every backup client (aka disk).
In my case the customer is supposed to pay for a "tape quota"... for
example, 1Gb space for 3 installations.
I need a mechanism to control if the overall storage of customers'
servers are hitting/exceeding the quota they have paid.
The 2 goals to achieve are:
1) to be informed about overflows in relation to every purchased
customer quota and even to notify the customer
2) to effectively deny the backup if the client has exceeded his quota
<<proposed Amanda modifications snipped>>
Personally, I think you are trying to enforce quotas in the wrong place.
First, the amount of tape used is a function not only of the original
disk space used, but also your backup configuration (tapecycle,
dumpcycle,
runspercycle, data churn rate, etc).
Maybe you are right, there may be better places to put this
configuration in.
Mine was only a proposal to discuss on it to find the best way to do it.
Any better places/format to suggest?
Second, if a customer is over their quota, do you not back it up at all,
or only back up the quota amount (and how would you do that, truncate
the dump possibly rendering the entire backup worthless)?
If I were a
customer paying for X amount of backups and during an upgrade happened
to end up with 105% of X of data, needed to recover the next day but
found out it wasn't backed up, I would certainly not remain a customer.
It seems to me that it would be much simpler to base your backup fees
on the amount of disk to be backed up and the desired frequency (daily,
weekly, whatever).
My inital idea was to not backup it at all because you give him a
"warning" period that could be even a month if you want.
In my proposal I've included the "quotahits" parameter to specify the
warning time to be sure the customer gets backupped even if he has not
paid for the extra space it uses.
An every day mail bothering him for n days you choose should be
sufficient to warn him without creating a disservice.
You have even to consider the fact that a customer may not be aware of
the fact that backup space increased a lot for many motives:
For example:
1) Hacking: thus uploading of files in your server to server the piracy
community
2) Growing logging
3) Orphaned temporary big files
4) Old and useless targz files of entire directories...
5) ... add other weird things...
If a customer is not aware of this and you immediately apply a fee on
extra space he can get frustrated even if you have the right.
Consider this type of contract like the bandwidth bursting mode that is
applied by some ISP to their customers: they are not charged for peaks
but they are warned.
If you get a lot of peaks in short times your bandwidth contract has to
be revised.
If you are really interested in charging for tape
space you could easily write a script to parse Amanda's reports and
automatically comment out DLEs if someone exceeds their quota for
whatever
period of time is agreed on.
Frank
This may be an idea but before applying myself for it I would like to
discuss with you (folks) the best way to do it.
Thanks for your comments. :)
Stefano Coletta
creator AT mindcreations DOT com
http://www.mindcreations.com
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