Amanda-Users

suggestions for RH amanda installation

2004-05-29 14:15:55
Subject: suggestions for RH amanda installation
From: Jon LaBadie <jon AT jgcomp DOT com>
To: Jon LaBadie <amanda-users AT amanda DOT org>
Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 14:07:22 -0400
A client has about 4 or 5 nearly identical HP workstations
(xeon's) running RH 7.3 linux.  They are looking for a backup
solution and before I make any concrete recommendations I'd
like to ask a few questions.

Most of their disk space is SCSI, generally 36GB, but a
couple of larger ones, include one 137GB.

I think they are going to want to backup to disk, at least
primarily.  To that end they are willing to get an external
usb drive (does RH 7.3 support that?) and when I suggested
instead an internal IDE drive, they went out and got a 250GB
drive and installed it before I revisited.  Until now I've
never seen a 240GB file system :))

Part of my concern is the age of the OS and the components.
Don't suggest an OS upgrade, they use it for a very costly
application and the app-vendor doesn't support anything more
recent.

Amanda is installed, but of course I want to get a recent snapshot
so I can better us the file:driver.

I see gcc 2.96 is already installed as is a libreadline (don't
hold me to it, but I think 4.3).  Stupidly I forgot to check the
tar version.  Any thoughts on the compiler and readline versions?

Might installing newer compiler and libs upset the vendor's app?
I must avoid that at all costs.

The file systems are all ext3.  In reading the man pages I don't
see any dump program that claims to handle ext3 FS, only ext2.
Is that just old docs, or is there no dump available for ext3?

BTW I'm aware of LT's rant about dump not being safe.

Along those lines, there is no file system snapshot capability
in RH 7.3/ext3 is there?

After compiling the server version of amanda, is it feasible/easy,
to also compile just the client version on the server and build
an rpm to install on the other 4 workstations?

The client still has traditional views of backups (of course).
So they are talking about periodically copying a day's backup
to a tape device, avoiding the need to do a separate archival
backup.  Silly persons :))  Considering I would be doing normal
amanda type scheduling and using "virtual tapes" on the big disk,
any ideas on an archival scheme that would fit amanda's and the
client's view of the world?

Thanks for the input.

jl
-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
 4455 Province Line Road        (609) 252-0159
 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322      (609) 683-7220 (fax)