to compress or not to compress ???

Yes, I am learning -- at the expense of many questions ;>

First, a brief overview:

I have five (5) Linux servers, totaling ~50 Gb used diskspace, divided
roughly even across all five.

I have several DAT tape drives, the largest of which is an HP DDS-3.  I
have twelve (12) DDS-3 tapes, and twenty (20) DDS-2 tapes, as well as
several cleaning tapes.

So far, I have configured:

    dumpcycle     7
    runspercycle  7
    runtapes      1

I am studying _Using Amanda_ here:

        <http://www.backupcentral.com/amanda.html>

I am confused about two (2) things:

[1] Should I use hardware compression?

There seem to be several schools of thought here.  I want to know how
Amanda works with hardware compression?  What are the advantages of
using software compression?  What are the disadvantages of using *both*
hardware and software compression?


[2] What are the optimal dumptypes for my situation?

Yes, I have already struggled with and overcome dump vs. GNUTAR.  My
first mistake was using comp-root and comp-user on localhost.

Yes, I understand that Amanda can facilitate planning and scheduling full
vs. incremental backups.

However, I am concerned about developing a simple recovery strategy.  I
am currently having problems with amrecover; but, I think that is due to
short vs. FQDN usage -- so, I'll save that for another time.

I am running exclusively Debian woody on all systems.  I believe that I
have a good working filesystem design.  I am on a fast network.

Yes, I come from a traditional system administrator's backup mindset,
and I do not want that to undermine Amanda's design.


What do you think?

-- 
Best Regards,

mds
mds resource
877.596.8237
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Dare to fix things before they break . . .
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Our capacity for understanding is inversely proportional to how much
we think we know.  The more I know, the more I know I don't know . . .
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