Re: Determining appropriate backup strategy

On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 05:24:43PM -0500, Vicki Stanfield wrote:
> Jon LaBadie wrote:
> 
> >On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 03:47:51PM -0500, Vicki Stanfield wrote:
> > 
> >
> >>P.S. I think I asked before but didn't get an answer. Is there a source 
> >>for an explanation of the different priorities of backups. I have the 
> >>following defined from an inherited amanda.conf file:
> >>
> >>always-full (obvious)
> >>comp-low-tar
> >>comp-med-tar
> >>comp-high-tar
> >>low-tar
> >>med-tar
> >>high-tar
> >>comp-low-dump
> >>comp-med-dump
> >>comp-high-dump
> >>low-dump
> >>med-dump
> >>high-dump
> >>
> >>The explanations in the amanda.conf are insufficient. I need to know 
> >>what decisions amanda makes when determining how often to back up each 
> >>dumptype.
> >>   
> >>
> >
> >A good additional place to read is the man pages.
> >Under priority this appears:
> >
> >    priority "string"
> >         Default:  medium.  When there is no tape to  write  to,
> >         Amanda will do incremental backups in priority order to
> >         the  holding  disk.   The  priority  may  be   high(2),
> >         medium(1), low(0) or a number of your choice.
> >
> >So the difference appears important only when saving ONLY to holding disk.
> >Then you can define which come earlier or later incase the holding disk
> >fills.
> >
> > 
> >
> I think what I am really talking about is the dumptype. I have the ones 
> I listed defined. I think I might be confusing them with priority. I 
> suppose the dumptype could only mean level of compression. But then I 
> need more information about how Amanda decides what to back up when. 
> I'll look back to the amanda.org site.
> 

Set one of your DLE's to the dumptype.  Maybe even a dummy DLE.
Then run amadmin ... disklist ... command to see the relevant
parameters.  Change the dumptype and rerun amadmin to compare.
A sample run:

  # amadmin DS1 disklist butch /var
  line 10:
    host butch:
        interface default
    disk /var:
        program "GNUTAR"
        exclude list "/usr/local/etc/amanda/exclude.gtar"
        priority 0
        dumpcycle 7
        maxdumps 8
        maxpromoteday 10000
        strategy STANDARD
        compress CLIENT FAST
        comprate 0.50 0.50
        auth BSD
        kencrypt NO
        holdingdisk YES
        record YES
        index YES
        skip-incr NO
        skip-full NO

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