On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 10:24:24AM -0700, bao wrote:
> For networks where there
> is a full-time backup admin, letting Amanda spread out the level 0's 
> seems simpler. Restoration is what the admin
> does most often, and (s)he should have mastered it.

As I mentioned earlier, amanda works great for me and I'm no "full-time
backup admin".  (I've never even worked for a company big enough to
have a half-time backup specialist!)  The IS department here consists
of a manager (who mostly runs cables and talks to vendors), a DBA (who
does database stuff), and me (who does everything else).  I spend maybe
5 minutes a day on swapping tapes and reviewing amanda's email reports.
That's the extent of my 'backup admin' time.

> But for networks where restoring occurs once in a while, tape management 
> is a tedious task.

You should be using amanda.  Takes the tedium right out.

When you need to restore, just fire up amrecover, tell it the host,
disk, date, and filename and it tells you which tape to insert and when.
No manual tape management required, aside from changing the tape daily.
(And if you have the budget for it, you can buy a changer and let amanda
run it herself with no manual intervention required at all.)