On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 at 12:11pm, Dana Bourgeois wrote

> To follow up on this a little further..could you address 'runtapes'?  If I
> set 'runtapes' to two or larger, then as long as every client dump is
> smaller than one tape, amanda will pack it all on (if I don't have
> tape/drive problems and don't hit the 'runtapes' limit first), is that true?

That depends on your dumpcycle.  Amanda's goal is to backup about the same 
amount of data every night -- not to fill the available tape(s).

> I assume that if an amdump fits on one tape, a weekly cycle would use only
> the 7 tapes and be happy.  No weird 'I need two tapes per amdump' side

Yep.

> Is there anyone who is using GNUTAR exclusively for its reported advantages
> in a heterogeneous environment?  Is there anyone who has broken up large
> (100G) partitions with GNUTAR to fit on smaller (20G) tapes?  How well does
> that work and how much extra tracking do you have to do?  Does amanda track
> it all well enough?  

Yes.  Yes (well, a couple of 2TB partitions, a .5TB, and a 1TB with 100GB 
tapes).  Works well, tracking isn't *too* bad as long as you remember to 
comment out DLEs you get rid of rather than deleting them.  Not quite -- 
you need to do some stuff by hand.

-- 
Joshua Baker-LePain
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University