Hello,

I am new to AMANDA but I like it very much but I didn't get a good answer from 
all the documentation I read already and hope to get answers from the mailing 
list now.

I use a Overland PowerLoader with a Ultrium LTO (400GB tape) device which 
change the tapes automatically.

The clients push all the backup data via rsync (or other tools) to the server 
and I had to do a full backup every day of this directories the files are 
stored in. No incremental backup is allowed.
Don't ask. I know this isn't the best to backup with AMANDA but I had to do it 
in this way.
For the dumpes I use a holding disk before the dumpes are written to tape.

The problem I have is that the last dump is to big (145GB) and doesn't fit on 
the first tape. So it is no problem. The PowerLoader take the next tape and 
everything is fine.

But the entire backup take about 12-14 hours for all data (see statistics at 
the bottom). That is a little bit too much and I like to speed up the 
configuration.

I have 2 questions:

1. How can I tell AMANDA to start with the big directories first and then the 
small directories?
As I have seen AMANDA allways starts with the smallest and then the next 
biggest and so on.

2. I use a holding disk for the configuration. But AMANDA always do only one 
dump at the same time.
How can I tell AMANDA to dump more directories at the same time to the holding 
disk so that the LTO device can backup the data faster and don't have to wait 
for the dumps of the holding disk?

It is a problem when the dumps are bigger then about 20GB because the LTO 
drive had to wait for the next dump until it is written to the holding disk.
The result is the very high run time of AMANDA I think.

Are the "maxdumps" and "inparallel" options at the amanda.conf the way to get 
several dumpes written at once to the holding disk?
Remember the files to back up are on the server already.

I dont' have access to the config files today but let me know if you need them 
to answer my questions.
For your information the LTO device use hardware compression. Is it better to 
disable hardware compression to speed up the run time?

Here are some statistics:

STATISTICS:
                          Total       Full      Daily
                        --------   --------   --------
Estimate Time (hrs:min)    0:40
Run Time (hrs:min)        13:08
Dump Time (hrs:min)        8:27       8:27       0:00
Output Size (meg)      374733.9   374733.9        0.0
Original Size (meg)    374733.9   374733.9        0.0
Avg Compressed Size (%)     --         --         -- 
Filesystems Dumped           12         12          0
Avg Dump Rate (k/s)     12613.8    12613.8        -- 

Tape Time (hrs:min)        3:35       3:35       0:00
Tape Size (meg)        374733.9   374733.9        0.0
Tape Used (%)             194.1      194.1        0.0
Filesystems Taped            12         12          0
Avg Tp Write Rate (k/s) 29707.6    29707.6        -- 

USAGE BY TAPE:
  Label                    Time      Size      %    Nb
  Daily027       1:59  224033.5  116.1    11
  Daily028       1:36  150700.4   78.1     1


Best regards

Dominik