--On Friday, September 20, 2002 16:57:33 -0700 Michael Hannon <jmh AT
physics.ucdavis DOT edu> wrote:
> Greetings. We've been happily running Amanda on a number of different
> systems around here for several years. Up to this point, we've always used a
> single tape drive (usually high-capacity) on each tape server. Now we're
> getting to the point where
> disk capacity is exploding. Tape capacity is increasing as well, of course,
> but it appears that we'll soon be in a situation where one large tape drive
> will be inadequate. Maybe we're there already.
>
> This has lead us to consider alternatives to our somewhat simple-minded
> approach to backups. One alternative would be to make finer subdivisions of
> the file systems that we back up (with GNU tar). I.e., instead of backing up
> simply:
>
> /home
>
> we might put separate entries in the disklist file for:
>
> /home/annie
> /home/bob
> .
> .
> .
> /home/zelda
>
> or whatever. That seems mildly tedious and probably would cause us at least
> to have to modify our number of tapes per cycle, buy additional tapes, etc.
>
> Another thought we had was to throw additional money at the problem and buy
> some kind of tape changer. But I have what seems to me to be a fundamental
> question about changers that I don't see answered in the FAQ's or .../docs,
> etc. I.e., if we have
> some kind of a tape changer, does it allow us to exceed Amanda's
> one-tape-per-session limit? Can we make a single "virtual" tape out of
> multiple tapes in the changer? Or is it the function of the tape changer
> simply to let Amanda run unattended for
> as many sessions as there are tapes in the changer, but still using only one
> tape per session?
>
With or without a changer, Amanda will not back up a disklist entry that
is larger than a single tape. A changer (either a real one or chg-manual
where you are the changer) will allow you to use multiple tapes on a
single backup run, with one or more (however many will fit) disklist entries
backed up on each tape.
Either way, if you do eventually need to split a filesystem, it is safer
if you leave the top level directory in the disklist and use an exclude list
to exclude the subdirectories that you add to the disklist. That way it
doesn't matter if you forget to add a new subdirectory to your disklist,
it will still get backed up.
Frank
--
Frank Smith fsmith AT hoovers
DOT com
Systems Administrator Voice: 512-374-4673
Hoover's Online Fax: 512-374-4501
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