We use a nice GUI program to do that, but the product is outdated and
buying a new licence is too costly. Amanda seems good, and we use more
and more open source software here so we decided to try it out.

Our current method of backup is the traditional incrementals Mon, Tue,
Wed, Thu, and Friday we do a Full backup. No backups on week end.

The tapes are stored in a locked cabinet outside the server room.
After 3 "business days" on site, the tapes are sent to a remote
location.  This permits to have the tape handy if we have to restore a
file that was modified and deleted in the last 2 days.

Monthly tapes (Full backup) are kept forever for archiving/financial
regulation  pupose.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to do something similar with amanda.

I'm not familiar with backup levels. It's a concept I always had a
difficulty to grasp.  If I send the tapes older than 3 days to the
remote site, will the tapes of the last three days ALWAYS contain the
file modified in the last 3 days ?

How can I manage to do full backups of every server each FRIDAY ? I
know I should create a new config specifying always full and an
infinite tapecylce and run it on fridays, and run the "regular"
schedule on the other days.

One last question: Is there an easy way with amanda to do an "ad hoc"
backup ? I mean, say I have to backup a group of directories on a
server, do I have to create a new config, a new disklist, etc... ?
There must be an easier way ?

I'm reading the documentation, but there is a lot of doc, and not
enough samples and use-cases IMHO.

Thanks