On Friday 01 April 2005 03:19, Erik P. Olsen wrote:
>On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 02:06 -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 08:46:31AM +0200, Belen Isla wrote:
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > I am trying to configure amanda to backup my system and I would
>> > like to use two different types of virtual tapes in a single
>> > configuration file, I mean, I would like to use big virtual
>> > tapes for full backups and smaller ones for incrementals. Is it
>> > possible to use the parameter tapetype twice in the amanda.conf
>> > file? In affirmative case, how can I associate a virtual tape
>> > with the appropriate type?
>>
>> Just for my own interest ...
>>
>> Why do you want to do your own scheduling when amanda
>> often does a far superior job to human defined scheduling.
>
>Hm. I would like to challenge this statement. It may be true if you
> have a large network of systems to back up but if you only have one
> system I doubt if it's true. Before my switch to Linux I backed up
> my system (OS/2) on a weekly schedule with one full back-up and
> four incremental back-ups to one tape only. It worked extremely
> well, if I crashed my system - which I did very often - it took me
> about half an hour to recover either using a stand-alone recover
> program or my maintenance OS/2 if it was alive and I kept an
> archive of up to 8 weeks of back-ups. Now with Linux and Amanda I
> use 9 tapes mainly because Amanda won't add today's back-up to
> yesterday's tape. I could probably do with less tapes but I feel
> more confident with a large tape pool.
>
>I would add that I haven't yet found out how to keep a repository of
>back-ups of the previous weeks like I was used to with OS/2.

Thats in the variable 'tapecycle'.  If you have, say 30 tapes, and a 7 
day dumpcycle, you will have the current, most recent in those last 7 
tapes, but if one of them is defective, then you can back up another 
cycle, up to 3 past historys being available.

I'm useing virtual tapes, 18 of them, with a 4 day dumpcycle, and that 
keeps a 180GB partition on a 200GB disk at about 95% capacity.

>I like 
> the safe feeling of having a set of back-up tapes from which I know
> I can recreate the system as it was on a specific day. Now I just
> have my 9 tapes used in a round Robin fashion.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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