Friday 07 November 2008 09:38:55 kirjutas peter7:

> 1. I want to store the backup on-site (on NAS) and then copy it to tapes to
> take off-site. Does Amanda support it? How would the restoration from tapes
> work if NAS went down?

I've never done something like this, but one topic which is sometimes 
discussed on this list and seems to cover your need is RAIT. This way each 
backup is done simultaneously to two backup devices, in your case to NAS and 
to tape. You could restore from either. Maybe not exactly what you had in 
mind, but perhaps covers the same requirement?

> 2. Let's say that during a dumpcycle user creates a file and then one of
> the following days the file is deleted. How easy/difficult is it to restore
> the file not knowing when exactly it was created and deleted?

If the filename is known, then it's not terribly difficult. Using amrecover, 
just go to the directory where the file is and do a 'ls'. If you don't see 
the file, then use the 'setdate' command of amrecover to get a view of this 
directory from the day before. If you still don't see the file, move back 
another day etc. If you reach the beginning of your tape history and haven't 
found the file, you're out of luck :)

> 3. I want to leave Amanda to do its magic, and have a weekly dumpcycle, but
> I'd like to always keep previous dumpcycle data on-site. How do I configure
> that? Do I need to have two separate configs?

There is no need for two separate configs. You should just have a sufficient 
number of tapes so that you can set your 'tapecycle' to contain enough tapes 
of two full dumpcycles. This way Amanda won't overwrite any tapes from the 
currently running dumpcycle and previous dumpcycle, meaning that you always 
have two weeks worth of backups.

> 4. Each night Amanda performs a full backup of part of the data.
> What about files that have been deleted since the last backup and not yet
> backed up in the current dumpcycle?

If your Amanda is set up in a typical way, then besides the full backups of 
some DLEs, incremental backups of other DLEs are also done each night. If the 
file was created after last full backup then it will exist in some 
incremental backup. Except, of course, if the file was created and then 
deleted on the same day, in which case Amanda had no chance to catch it.

--
Toomas