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Using Amanda without a tape changer
2003-05-22 13:27:43
Hello. I'm setting up a backup solution for a relatively small
secondary(?) school. We cannot afford to use any equipment like a tape
changer, but we've decided on a solution like this:
We've purchased a HP DAT72 drive (supports DDS3, DDS4 and DAT72 tapes),
as a reasonably extensible and inexpensive solution.
The server will be a FreeBSD machine with a total of 240 GB storage
capacity, using a 3Ware Escalade 7500-4 RAID card, with three 120 GB
drives in a RAID-5 configuration. (This will be enough for a while. :-)
We'll only be backing up the file server hard drive, as well as dumping
the network server hard drive. The rest of the computers will store any
work files on the file servers, and a backup of the operating system
and apps will simply be put on a CD-ROM image using software such as
GNU Parted or Symantec Ghost.
From what I've understood, Amanda should be run from a cron job, for
example at at midnight, once a day. I've also understood that you can
configure Amanda to only run on weekdays.
So, basically, the ideal scenario is to have someone go in to the
server room every morning, remove the ejected tape from the previous
day, and store it in a safe. The operator should then put in the next
tape in the cycle. The operator could even take the tapes home as a
crude off-site backup.
However, is it possible to tell Amanda to never ever use more than one
tape per day, circumventing the lack of a tape changer or tape
operator? Basically, it might be able to fully dump one filesystem, and
only do incremental dumps on the rest of them, never performing more
than one full dump per tape.
Failing that, is it possible to tell Amanda to perform the actual dumps
at night, where nobody is likely to be using the drives, but to delay
the actual recording to tape to the day? That way, an operator could
visit the server room N times a day to swap tapes. (This is suboptimal
for N > 2.)
One last issue. Am I correct in saying that the best way to circumvent
the limintation of Amanda not being able to split filesystem dumps
across tapes, is to make sure that the partitions only are about 50 GB?
(With 72 GB tapes.) So, basically, have several seperate home
partitions...
Thanks in advance!
--
Per von Zweigbergk <pvz AT e.kth DOT se>
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