Re: human-readable tapelabels

torsdagen den 29 maj 2003 kl 16.02 skrev Mathias Körber:

I am about to deploy Amanda for a customer, and there are
some concerns that the end-users responsible for  inserting the
correct tapes may not be up to the task.

In detail:
     - users will not read the daily email telling them which
        tape is expected and want to have a scheme as simple as
        possible
     - users will not understand that 18 tapes make a 3 week cycle
        (assuming weekday backups only). Ie, the 'a few extra tapes'
        may be confusing

- Amanda's way to say 'a new tape' will confuse the use if theyactually

        read the emails. They will want to be told exactly which tape
        to insert (or better deduct using dead simple reasoning)
     - should a tape need to be skipped (for whatever reason) and
        eg tape 15 follow tape 13, thsi will later confuse the users as
        the sequence will get jumbled.

We obviously want to hold to a minimum support questions regardingwhich tape

is to be used andwhy is the sequence not like ...

My boss sugegsted a simple scheme of
        Week 1 Monday
        Week 1 Tuesday
thru
        Week 3 Thursday
        Week 3 Friday

I understand that Amanda's way of labelling and rotating tapes in a non
fixed manner is superior, but may
be beyond the users' grasp.

Amanda is, as far as I've understood, not designed for these kinds ofscenarios.


As I see it, you have two "good" options:

1: Write the Amanda labels on the stickers, and tell them to changetapes as they are told by the daily e-mails. If asked by anybody howthe tapecycle really works, mumble something about magic. I fail to seehow users could be confused operating a system that tells them exactlywhat to do and when. :-) In fact, you could probably make a relativelysimple script which would simply display on the computer screen whattape is expected next in case logging in for checking e-mail is tootime consuming and/or complicated.

2: Use a far less complex a solution than Amanda, such as runninggnutar or dump in a cron job, writing it to tape. Optionally include an"Amanda-like" tape label in the front of the tape to check for humanerror. This requires the user to understand the system in order tooperate it. Sure, it's very simple, but it's still more difficult thanjust telling them to "put in the tape that the computer tells them to".

To conclude: What's the problem in asking users to read an e-mail andsimply choose the tape to insert into the drive based on that? And isit really up to the end user to understand all the details underlyingtheir systems, and the responsibility for a system administrator todumb them down to something inferior just to make them more"understandable"?


--
Per von Zweigbergk <pvz AT e.kth DOT se>