Hi Doug, 

your point of view about my proposal is interesting.

I'll try to explain why I'm approaching the problem this way instead of
applying your idea or others with a client-trusted configuration.

We have three types of customers (and I think this scenario is common for
the majority of ISPs)

1) Customers on OUR servers managed by US: customer is only responsible for
updating his data.
2) Customers on OUR servers administered by US for disaster recovery,
monitoring and misc tasks and by CUSTOMER for applications configuration and
data administration (ie. server rent in a mixed administration mode)
3) Customers on THEIR servers administered by THEMSELVES (ie. co-location).
We have no access to their machines.

For the customer type 3 disk quotas are not under control of ISP and even
for the 2nd type you can't be sure that someone is not messing up with disk
quotas.

This explains why, unfortunately, your idea is only applicable to the 1st
type of customers and perhaps to the 2nd type for security reasons.

I hope that now it is more clear why I need a server-side control mechanism
rather than a client-side one.

Thank you for interesting about my proposal, your opinion is very valuable
for me and my company.

Bye,

Stefano Coletta


> -----Messaggio originale-----
> Da: owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org 
> [mailto:owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org] Per conto di Amanda Admin
> Inviato: martedì 22 aprile 2003 18.57
> A: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
> Oggetto: RE: Proposal v2: quota limit on backup clients and 
> groupware (Hope to be added on the wishlist)
> 
> 
> Stefano,
> 
> I don't mean to discount your approach, but, if I had to 
> solve the problem as you present it, I would use disk quotas 
> to control the amount of customer storage and leave amanda to 
> do her work of coordinating the backups. There are many solid 
> and well documented filesystems that support user and group 
> quotas as I'm sure you know.
> 
> I would then offer customers a choice of "Backup Service 
> Levels" in two categories "Recovery Service Plans" and 
> "Archival Service Plans". I'll leave the specifics to you or 
> others, but the costs for such services (assuming amanda :) 
> would be calculated based on runspercycle, tapecycle, 
> runtapes, customer quota, cost of the tapes, tape drive 
> depreciation, and tape management.
> 
> I think such plans would be easier for a customer to 
> understand and their data is always being backed up.
> 
> Doug Douglass
>