Amanda-Users

Re: Backup plan needs advice.

2003-06-24 15:59:34
Subject: Re: Backup plan needs advice.
From: Gene Heskett <gene.heskett AT verizon DOT net>
To: bao <bao AT gibbons DOT com>, amanda <amanda-users AT amanda DOT org>
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 15:00:08 -0400
On Tuesday 24 June 2003 12:38, bao wrote:
>Hello,
>
>After a very long and hard time struggling with Amanda, I figured
> out that it's the Athlon bug, and have
>switched to an Intel. Now it works.

The Athlon Bug?  Sorry, please elucidate on this subject, its entirely 
new to me as I have been running amanda on an Athlon DX1600 for 2 
years with no problems I didn't create.  Likewise for around 3 years 
on a K6-II and then a K6-III.


>However, I am still confused of
> some things regarding the backup
>plan, and hope someone will help me answer them.
>
>I would like to back up everyday, in incremental, and a weekly full
>backup once a week, on a specified
>day. Let the full be on Monday, and the incrementals be on the rest
> of the week. I now have to configs:

I believe the word is two?

>1. Weekly: has dumpcycle=0, runspercycle=1, tapecycle=1,
> strategy=noinc, index=yes, and record=no
>2. Daily:  has dumpcycle=7, runspercycle=6, tapecycle=6,
>strategy=nofull, , index=yes, record=yes
>
>The Weekly full will call amadmin to set to run level 0 before it
> runs.
>
>Q1: If I want the incrementals of a week to follow from that week's
>full, how do I set the record??
>(Mon : level 0, Tues-Sun : level 1 - backing up any changes from the
>most recent Monday)
>
>Q2. The Weekly full backup will be transferred to tape with a cycle
> of 8 tapes, then rotate. What do
>I need to copy to tape beside the backup image?? index ?? log ??
> debug files ??
>
>Thank you all,

Me, gets up on shaky old soapbox.

While amanda can be forced to do it that way, thats not how amanda was 
designed to run.

Whats wrong with letting amanda do it her way?

The result is the same in that you'll have a good backup strategy.  
Doing it amanda's way will result in similar amounts of data being 
backed up up each night because amanda will adjust the schedule over 
many runs trying to do just that.

Doing it your way will get you one huge backup you'll have to babysit 
if you don't have a changer, and very little tape useage during the 
week, but the tapes will still be used.  Doing it amanda's way you 
can use a much smaller tape, and use about 90% of it every night.

Somehow, that seems to be the more efficient method of the two.

I'm a home user, backing up just two machines, with a total drive 
capacity of about 170Gb, but only maybe 65Gb in the disklist, with a 
dumpcycle=7, runspercycle=7, tapecycle=28, runtapes=1, and doing it 
to 4Gb uncompressed DDS2 tapes.

To demo how this works, from last nights email:
-------
These dumps were to tape DailySet1-02.
The next tape Amanda expects to use is: DailySet1-03.


STATISTICS:
                          Total       Full      Daily
                        --------   --------   --------
Estimate Time (hrs:min)    0:19
Run Time (hrs:min)         2:54
Dump Time (hrs:min)        0:29       0:05       0:24
Output Size (meg)        3551.3     3168.6      382.7
Original Size (meg)      4025.1     3168.6      856.5
Avg Compressed Size (%)    38.2        --        38.2   (level:#disks 
...)
Filesystems Dumped           44          6         38   (1:35 2:3)
Avg Dump Rate (k/s)      2055.8    10628.0      267.8

Tape Time (hrs:min)        2:34       2:17       0:17
Tape Size (meg)          3551.3     3168.6      382.7
Tape Used (%)              96.6       86.2       10.4   (level:#disks 
...)
Filesystems Taped            44          6         38   (1:35 2:3)
Avg Tp Write Rate (k/s)   393.8      393.9      392.7

USAGE BY TAPE:
  Label              Time      Size      %    Nb
  DailySet1-02       2:34    3551.3   96.6    44
------------
Thats not the whole email from amanda of course, but it shows several 
things.

First, last nights run apparently covered mostly level 0 DLE's that 
aren't compressed or can't be compressed.  When the opposite is true, 
I have seen the Original size line display figures above 10Gb.  From 
the June 3rd run for instance:

Output Size (meg)        3560.0     3416.8      143.1
Original Size (meg)     10003.3     9746.4      257.0

Second, that amanda used what it thought was 96.6% of the tapes 
capacity, which I have reduced slightly in the tapetype in order to 
save room for about 100 megs of stuff I append to the end of the tape 
after amanda is done.

Third, that those DLE's which are set to be compressed, compressed to 
38.2% of their original size.  It will vary some, but thats typical, 
and it beats the socks off of useing hardware compression.  Those 
DLE's I don't compress cannot be compressed by the hardware 
compressor either, and may in fact grow some.

Me, falls off collapsing soapbox, skins elbow. ;-)

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III@500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP@1400mhz  512M
99.26% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com attornies please note, additions to this message
by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.