> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org [mailto:owner-amanda-users AT 
> amanda DOT org]
> On Behalf Of Jon LaBadie
> Sent: Friday, October 20, 2006 7:50 PM
> To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
> Subject: Re: General backup advice help?
> 
> 
> On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 03:50:25PM -0700, Don Murray wrote:
> >
> > Hello list,
> >
> > I've been lurking on the list a few days (not really long enough to be
> > opening my mouth, but here it goes).
> >
> > I am a relatively novice sysadmin looking for a better backup setup than
> > our handcrafted scripts.  Amanda looks interesting but I am worried that
> > it will not necessarily solve my problem.  So I was hoping to beg your
> > indulgence for a moment and see if anyone has any advice for me.
> >
> > My main concern is that we have to be "up" round the clock these days as
> > we have people connecting during their work day, 9 hours different from
> > ours.  So having major services disrupted in the middle of the night for
> > backups doesn't seem a viable solution anymore, as it hits the other
> > people in the middle of the day.
[McGraw, Robert P.] 

The solution to this is to take a snapshot of the data you want to back up
and back up the snapshot. Users continue to work without interruption and
you get a good backup without any file changes during the backup.

> 
> "Up" is less a concern to me than "connected".  Are some of these
> people working on laptops or other computers that are not accessible
> to your backup server except at certain times?
> 
> Let's assume not, that all are connected when you want to do backups.
> 
> >
> > We are a small business.  We have 2 main linux servers each with about
> > 200G to back up.  Backing up a full 200G volume across the network takes
> > about 7 hours currently.
> >
> > I understand from the documentation that Amanda will attempt to balance
> > the time taken for backups through its scheduling process.  However, it
> > seems to me that when you have to do a level 0 of size X, you have to do
> > it, and so you will take the full 7 hours.
> >
> > The bad news is that currently these systems are set up with the full
> > 200G on single partitions.
> >
> 
> If you are willing to use tar as as your backup program (many, many
> amanda sites do that) then there is not problem.  You say you have
> basically 400GB of data.  The basic unit of backup for amanda is
> called a "DiskList Entry" (DLE) after the name of a config file.
> With tar as the backup program you can specify directory tree's
> as a DLE rather than filesystems.  So you could have a DLE for
> /boot, /var, /home, /usr/local, /usr (without local), /opt,
> /database, and one for / without all the others.  This is done
> by "including" or "excluding" files and directories in the DLE
> config.  Now with 16 DLE's from two systems (or even more is you
> wish), amanda can spread the level 0's of those 16 items over
> your dumpcycle (typically a week).  So on a typical day, only
> 2 or 3 of the DLEs will get a level 0 and on average your daily
> backups will be 1/7th of your 400GB or about 60GB/day.
> 
> --
> 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)

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