On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 02:05:29AM -0000, rwk AT americom DOT com wrote:
> > > I wanted to have backups going to an online disk, for 
> > > onsite fast recovery, and to tape for off-site and longer 
> > > term historic storage.
> 
> I think this can be accomplished by configuring amanda with no holding
> disk and using a disk file as one of the rait devices, though I have not
> yet tried it.

Doing that would prevent Amanda from doing dumps in parallel;
it'd be throttled back to effectively single-threaded operation.

I've ended up using the idea that someone here (Jon?) has
described:
  - a "daily" configuration that writes to "file:" pseudo-tapes
    -- runs Monday-Thursday nights

  - a "weekly" configuration that does all level-0's and writes
    to real tapes -- runs Friday night

  - a "perm" configuration that's just like "weekly" but uses a
    different tape series -- it runs *instead* of "weekly" on the
    first Friday of every other month
    
The difference between "weekly" and "perm" is that the latter's
tapes will never be overwritten -- they'll be kept as a permanent
archive -- while "weekly"'s tapes will cycle in the usual way.
Some day, I'm sure that some day all those old "perm"-tape
indexes will grow big enough that I'll have to start pruning
them, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.  Maybe burn
them onto CD or something.

I have to admit this is all new -- "perm" is scheduled for its
first run tomorrow night, and neither "daily" nor "weekly" has
been through a full tape-cycle yet.  So I'm sure things will get
tweaked before they settle down into a routine.

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        erics AT telepres DOT com
|  |  /
When I came back around from the dark side, there in front of me would
be the landing area where the crew was, and the Earth, all in the view
of my window. I couldn't help but think that there in front of me was
all of humanity, except me.
        - Michael Collins, Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot