On Tuesday 22 February 2005 03:00, ddaasd wrote:
>Hi,
>I am new to this list.
>I work in a company as admin where AMANDA is implemented as a BackUp
>System, so this list is exactly what I was looking for.
>
>Also I am new to Amanda. I've never configured amanda from scratch.
> Here in the firm, the former admin has configured amanda and now I
> have it working.
>Last days a colleague asked me why are we using tape backup which is
>more complicated and why do we not use an external 250 GB
> USB/Firewire HDD. I didn't know exactly what to say.
>
>I know all companies have tape backup, but which are the real
> reasons for that. Why not to use an external 300 GB USB HDD?
The fact that the tape can be removed from site for secure storage,
and even removed from the use rotation for long term storage recovery
and archival maintainance is probably the tipping point.
I used tapes for several years, but as a home user and almost
retired, the cost of replacement drives when they wear out, along
with the relative lack of dependability of the only affordable tape
format, DDS2, finally tipped me over to useing a 180GB partition on a
seperate 200GB drive for my home useage. On that drive is /var,
swap, and /amandatapes. /var is on a seperate drive here so I have a
log if the main drive suddenly goes read-only. Its probably a kernel
bug, and was, but its happened here. I run bleeding edge kernels
most of the time, 2.6.11-rc4-RT-V0.7.39-02 ATM.
And while the life of that drive may well be limited, I do expect
2-5 years service out of it since its mostly spinning 24/7/365 with a
powerdown maybe once a month because something I did crashed or I'm
changing hardware around, and that also exceeds the demonstrated life
of a much more expensive DDS2 tape changer that I still had to fool
with 2x weekly reloading the tape magazine.
So far in about 6 months usage (that knocking sound you hear? Me,
knocking on wood :) the only glitches have been setup and wrapper
script glitches because my scripts also save the index and
configuration data, appended to each "tape", so that a totally bare
metal recovery can be made to a freshly installed drive should the
main 120GB drive fail.
After about 6 months amanda has finally come into 'balance', and the
last 3 tapecycles have been hands off except for picking up the
report from the printers output tray the next morning and stacking it
on that pile of paper, and the occasional removal of the expired
reports from that stack. I haven't figured out a way to make them
self-destruct yet :)
And thats my $0.02 take on it. If I could afford tape, I would use
it, but at a cost well exceeding that big hd's cost a year for drives
and tape, its out of reach of a SS recipients budget.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.34% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com attorneys please note, additions to this message
by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
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