On Fri, May 07, 2004 at 10:03:10AM -0600, Chris Cameron wrote:
> I'm hoping someone here will be kind enough to help me teach Amanda
> about our tape rotation. I've read through man pages and mailing lists,
> but it seems the way Amanda deals with tapes doesn't lend itself well to
> our rotation schedule.
> 
> I'll spare you a complete explanation of our backup system, and just
> tell you where I've run into trouble. 
> 
> Tapes used on Thursday are sent offsite, and we receive an old offsite
> tape back to use for next Thursday. The tape we write to each Thursday
> is from 4 months earlier for that same week (so 3rd week of May, we get
> the tape used the 3rd week of January).
> 
> On the last Thursday of every month, rather than write to an old tape we
> take a new tape and send it offsite, never to return (we hope).
> 
> 
> So, the tact on this I've taken is trying to use different
> configurations, which works well. However the problem I have is that
> some months will have 5 thursdays, while others only 4. What this meant
> in the past was some tapes made on the final (non-permanent offsite)
> week would stay offsite until another month came around with 5 Thursdays
> in it, which at times can be at least a year.
> 
> 
> Is there any chance of getting Amanda to ask for the right tapes with
> this kind of setup? Do I have any alternatives? Up until now I'd just
> kill the tapelist file and start over.
> 

Amanda will always accept a newly labeled tape.  Even if asking for
a different tape.  Given that, could you set your tapecycle to
exactly the number of tapes in onsite/offsite rotation, sounds like
it is about 17 or 18 (4 months).  Don't label them "week 1 of month",
but just 1 to 17.  Amanda will ask for them in the order she first
sees them.

On the archive week, 4th or 5th week of the month whatever, label a
new tape and use it even if amanda asks for number 14.  Then mark
that tape (amadmin) as a "no-reuse" so it does not ask for the tape
the next time around but the index for the tape will remain available.

With a little creative regular expression you could make your config
recognize tapes with different labels for the rotation and for the
archive.  For example you might have your config use a label like
Backup-[A]*[0-9][0-9]*.  Then you could have Backup-1 to Backup-17
in regular roation and monthly create a Backup-A1, Backup-A2 ...
for the archive.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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