On Fri, Jun 23, 2006 at 12:09:20PM -0400, Ronald Vincent Vazquez wrote:
> Hello list:
> 
> Here is the scenario.  Let say that the server that gets destroyed is the
> tape server itself and we need a "bare metal" recovery.  Now, we are
> thinking about creating a "server restore" cd together which will have the
> amanda client in it (and needed drivers).
> 
> Question, would it be posible for the amanda client to access and drive
> the tape changer for the restoration?  Yes?  No?  If the answer to the
> question is yes/no, what are other alternatives to restore the backup
> server?  Would I have to install the *complete* amanda suite for this
> purpose?
> 

The short (and traditional) answer is you don't need any amanda at all
to do a recovery.  The data on the tape is structured in a very simple
way such that standard tools like mt, dd, tar/dump, gzip, etc. can
retrieve the data.

What you would lack is the niceties, which tape holds the backup you want,
which file on that tape, how was the backup created (dump or tar, compressed
or not, encrypted or not), ...  Without the logs and indexes even with an
amanda installation you would not have most of that.

Having amrestore, which doesn't use the logs/indexes, might help though.
Given a host or DLE, it will scan the tape retrieving any that match.

Anyone else feel other amanda commands would be helpful in a lost server
situation?

-- 
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)