Amanda users,

I just met with my manager and he offered me a new tape drive,
an SL48, with 2 LTO4 drives.

It was my understanding that amanda will use tape drives RAIT,
moving its output stream from one drive to the other when the
tape in the first drive becomes full. If I understand, this is
a feature that is unnecessary if my tape is imbedded in a jukebox.

I think amanda will also write a second tape concurrent and parallel
with the first, offsite or archiving perhaps ? Also a feature we
wheren't looking to implement.

I know I can run a second amanda config concurrent with the first,
did this for years with dual L9/LTO jukeboxes, but in the same box
I have to watch separation of the tape pool and things can become
really messy with how the disklist is structured and how the amanda
work area might overlap - not something I want to reproduce.

Is there a way I can effectively utilize a second drive within a
single jukebox ?

I think I might be better off getting a couple of SL24s with single
drives in each and starting to consolidate backups to fewer servers
rather than to a single server.

What do you think ?

                                                thanks,

                                                Brian
---
   Brian R Cuttler                 brian.cuttler AT wadsworth DOT org
   Computer Systems Support        (v) 518 486-1697
   Wadsworth Center                (f) 518 473-6384
   NYS Department of Health        Help Desk 518 473-0773



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