Suggest that you consider setting up a dump-cycle of 1 week, with a tape 
cycle of three weeks (5 tapes/15 tapes for weekdays only, 7/21 tapes for
seven days-per-week cycles).  This will permit you to send out a complete 
set of backup tapes once per week (for example, sending out the previous 
weeks tapes on Monday) and getting back the set of tapes from two weeks 
ago in exchange.  You then start reusing the three week-old tapes for the 
current week.  You will need to have three sets of tapes, in case it takes 
more than a day to exchange the tapes with your offsite repository.

Week    In-Use   Off-Site    To-Be-Reused

  1       Set3     Set2        Set1
  2       Set1     Set3        Set2
  3       Set2     Set1        Set3
  4       Set3     Set2        Set1
....

Because of the one-week dumpcycle, you will always have a complete set of 
dumps of each file system in the off-site tape set.  It will grow 
increasingly out-of-date during the week, but storing your local collection
of tapes in a fire-resistant vault should reduce your risks to an 
acceptable level.

As always, "Your mileage may vary..."

Don

Donald L. (Don) Ritchey
Unix System and Network Administrator
E-mail:  Donald.Ritchey AT exeloncorp DOT com


-----Original Message-----
From: David Lebel [mailto:lebel AT lebel DOT org]
Sent: Monday, January 06, 2003 12:19 PM
To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Subject: offsite strategies


Hi!

I'm new to Amanda;  I'm more used to "traditional" solutions like
Networker or NetBackup.  That being said, the setup I'm currently
administrating has been put in place by my predecessor and I'm wondering
if people are using Amanda in an "offsite" strategy, where there is one
"cycle" of tapes offsite (usually a few weeks old) and another cycle
residing onsite (ie. the current ongoing cycle).

My point is that I would like to be able to store a full cycle offsite
in case of a disaster so I can full rebuild all my machines without the
worries of having only partials full backups.

Any hints?

Ciao,
  ..>David

-- 
// david lebel <lebel@{lebel.org,nobiaze.com,openbsd.org}> //
// http://www.lebel.org/           http://www.nobiaze.com/ //
// pgp: 3633 6999 D47E 73ED 099F  4341 08A4 8E48 EF56 61D1 //


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