hi hi...

[snip]
> > from my understanding amanda is dumping (writing to holding disk) and
> > taping (writing from holding disk to virtual tapes) at the same time.
> > Doesn't this reduce speed on the dumper caused by the head-seeks on the
> > holding disc? Is there a way to prevent this scenario (as long as the
> > holding disc is big enough for all data that belongs to the job)?
> 
> 
> There are some tips here: 
> http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/How_To:Set_Up_Virtual_Tapes.
> 
> In particular, if you have a holding disk and your virtual tapes on the 
> same disk or raid, it is going to degrade performance.
> 
> 
[/snip]
yeah that manual is great, I used it to setup my vtapes. I'm just
curious if it's possible to reduce the runtime of amanda. on my daily
backupjob there's a folder containing 250GB of data, and it takes nearly
400min to backup this folder.
the backup system itself is very basic (a 1U machine with 4 HD's and 1GB
ethernet connection). enough for the current needs (and my knowledge of
amanda ;-)).

so thinking about the best way to setup a performant enough backup
server brought me to these steps:
- calculate size of backup
- measure read troughput of backup clients (what is the most realistic
way to do this?)
- have enough bandwidth and writing speed on the holding disc to
(nearly) save the datastream from multiple clients without introducing a
bottleneck
- taping time doesn't matter, as long as it's done within the remaining
time of the day ;-))

suggestions on this?

greetz
olli