--On Monday, November 11, 2002 08:18:09 +0100 Nicolas Cartron <nc AT ncartron 
DOT com> wrote:

> [sorry i didn't put the object in my previous mail]
> 
> All,
> 
> I want to install Amanda on a production environment,
> backup server on FreeBSD and clients running Linux, Solaris or FreeBSD.
> 
> I read in the section dedicated to Amanda (in the 'Unix backup &
> recovery', O'reilly) the following lines :
> 
> AMANDA currently starts a new tape for each run and does not provide a
> mechanism to append a new run to the same tape as a previous run
> 
> We are currently running Brightstor from Computer Associates,
> doing a full backup every sunday, and incremental backups on ONE tape
> everyday.
> Does that mean that if i want to do the same with Amanda, i have to
> rotate the tape every day ?
> (I forgot to explain that I have 2 DLT tapes backuping the datas).
 
Yes, Amanda normally uses a different tape for each run.  If you are
feeling lucky and have enough holdingdisk space, then you could just
let the backups accumulate on disk and then flush them all to one
tape the day before your full backup.
  You are living dangerously with your current setup. Each time
you write a tape you are overwriting the only copy of your data.
If you ever have a tape error you have nothing to restore from.
And if you need a file that was deleted the day before your full
but wasn't new enough to be on your incremental then you are out
of luck.
  Amanda wasn't really designed for the all fulls on one night
incrementals every other night schedule.  It can be forced to do it
that way but it takes more work to set it up like that.  The idea of
Amanda is to spread the fulls and incrementals around so as to use
about the same amount of tape on each run.

Frank

> Thanks in advance for your explanations.
> 
> -- 
> Nicolas CARTRON
> 
> 



--
Frank Smith                                                fsmith AT hoovers 
DOT com
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