Hi, I'm just starting to figure out Amanda and I have a few
questions, hopefully not too stupid.

My main goal is disaster recovery for a few servers, which
to me means having the most recent complete set of backups
off-site.  I'm curious how that would work with Amanda
dump cycles.  If, for instance, I have a dump cycle of 7
days, would I be guaranteed that I have a full set of data
if I have the 7 most recent tapes off-site?  Assuming all
my backups worked properly, of course.

And since things don't always work properly, would it
make sense to have 3 dump cycles in my tape cycle (I hope
I'm getting the terminology correct) and keep the most
recent 2 dump cycles off-site?

Now lets say I wanted to be able to restore users'
mistakenly deleted files as well.  Would it be possible
to keep a copy of the most recent dump cycle on-line
using the file: driver without having the backup data
collected twice?  I.e. grab /usr, spool it to tape, and
save it on disk.

I hope I'm asking reasonable questions.  I'm just trying
to be really clear on how this stuff works before I buy
all my equipment.

Thanks for your time,
- Bruce