Amanda-Users

Re: ideal dumpcicle

2004-03-17 17:57:22
Subject: Re: ideal dumpcicle
From: Gene Heskett <gene.heskett AT verizon DOT net>
To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 17:45:44 -0500
On Friday 21 March 2003 13:13, Sergio Pereira wrote:
>Hi list,
>
>I'm trying to setup amanda to backup 52 weeks with incremental daily
> and every week a full backup. My amanda.conf shows like:
>
>dumpcycle 7
>runspercycle 5
>tapecycle 55 tapes
>
>for sure I'm doing something wrong .. what is it?
>when I run amadmin to check the due date for each disk I get:
>
>Due in 367 days: backupserver:/etc
>Due in 361 days: backupserver:/var
>Due in 362 days: backupserver:/home

Based on the numbers above, this does NOT make sense.

>question: how do I modify my amanda.conf to meet my 52 weeks
>configuration?

First, don't worry about either the 52 weeks, or the full backups when 
you use amanda.  The only place the 52 weeks comes in is in 
determining if you actually need that many tapes (365 or more) 
actually on the shelf.

You see, amanda does her own scheduleing based on the tapecycle, 
dumpcycle, and runspercycle you give her.  You can, with creative 
scripting, force amanda into your form fitting box, but amanda won't 
be 100% happy & you'll be much better off to just let amanda do the 
schedueling as she tries to balance out things so about the same 
amount of data is saved on every run, thereby makeing much more 
efficient use of the available tape capacity.  I fill a 4Gb tape to 
>95% for every run here by letting amanda think for herself.

With your current settings of dumpcycle 7, runspercycle 5, and 
tapecycle 55, you are guaranteed that amanda will do a full dump of 
everything in the disklist "at some point in the 'runspercycle' of 
that dumpcycle of 7 days.  Ergo, at least once a week.  So thats 
fine, and if in the unlikely event you must do a recovery, then 
everything you need should be on the last 5 tapes amanda has written.

However, if you want a full years backup on hand, 55 tapes will only 
give you 11 weeks before amanda will start asking for the first tape 
again.  Amanda will not re-use a tape until the number of tapes in 
the 'tapecycle' have been used.

With the above figures, you will have on hand the ability to restore 
the system to its state at the end of virtually any day in the past 
11 weeks, or said another way, you'll have 11 full backups on hand.

Most of us are happy with 2 or 3, like I'm currently using 
dumpcycle=8, runspercycle=8, and tapecycle=28, (small drive here, 
can't get it all in 7 days) so I have about 3.5 full backups at any 
one time.

For business archival useage, and needing a year, then you'll need 260 
tapes and tell her 260 in the tapecycle value..  I'm not 'in 
business' so to me, 260 tapes is serious overkill even at $2 a tape 
for DDS2's on ebay. :-)

>thx all,
>
>sergio

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.22% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com attornies please note, additions to this message
by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>