On Sunday 05 February 2006 12:38, stan wrote:
>On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 11:18:33AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> On Sunday 05 February 2006 10:53, Ian Turner wrote:
>> >On Sunday 05 February 2006 10:40 am, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote:
>> >> AFAIK I recommended to use separate disks for vtapes and
>> >> holdingdisk.
>> >
>> >Why even use a holding disk at all with vtapes? It's not like
>> > you're going to keep the hard disk streaming.
>>
>> In order to allow better scheduling and somewhat reduced
>> fragmentation of the vtapes disk over time.  If it can stuff it all
>> onto the holding area which amanda will do if its of sufficient size
>> and allowed, then the following copy does it all on one stream, and
>> in sequential order, up cable0 and down cable1 in my case.
>>
>> Without the holding area, its possible amanda could be hammering
>> several files at once to the vtape drive, thrashing its seeking
>> mechanism excessively.  Or it might even revert to one dump at a
>> time as it would when going direct to tape with no holding disk, and
>> that would be noticeably slow.  I'm probably lucky as I put the
>> holding disk directory on /, and / usually has well over 25GB free
>> here.  I don't think its ever used more than 5GB of it though.
>
>Intersting, I never considered putting the dumpdisk on the root disk,
>I've always dedicated a physical spindle to it. But, on a machine that
>is dedicated to Amanda, using / sounds like a good idea.

A seperate physical spindle would be nice, but that would pack up my 
drive bays for a /dev/hdb, and the 2 in there now are running a bit 
warm according to smartd, nearly 50C.  BIG tower, sides open, but even 
so its heat handling leaves much to be desired.  Close it up and 
everything goes up another 15C. 3 exhaust fans counting the psu fan, 1 
intake in front grill just aren't enough.  Needs 2 more in front, 
otherwise the psu gets starved and runs too warm if I close it up...  
And the Zalman 'flower' takes up a lot of space too even if it is a 
pretty decent cpu cooler.

Next time I spend some money on a decently designed case.  I'm in love 
with the apple G5's and those molded plastic inserts that make sure the 
air goes where its needed for cooling. OTOH, I can't afford to buy a 
G5, so...  We sit here and dream.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.