On Thu, Feb 05, 2009 at 09:51:36AM -0800, Jose Hales-Garcia wrote:
> 
> I've just installed Amanda server and client and successfully tested  
> that it's working.  Now I want to start creating my production  
> environment and have some questions.  I don't think what I want to do  
> is unique and hopefully someone can point to documentation explaining  
> it.
> 
> My set up includes a 1 TB drive as the back up device.  I have five  
> such drives which I want to rotate every 3 months.  A complete cycle  
> would be done in 15 months.
> 
> My questions are:
> 

First my questions:

How do you plan to keep your backups?  Will each 1TB drive hold
3 months worth of backups or only the last day, or the last
month or ???.  How much data will you be backing up total?
How frequently do you need full backups?  How frequently will
you be doing backups.


> 1.  I'm assuming each drive would be a set, is that correct?   
> Something like daily-quarter1, daily-quarter2, etc.  How do avoid  
> duplicating the configurations for these sets, since they're identical?

Possible scenario.  You have about 100GB of data total on your
clients, you will backup 7 days a week, and only need a full
backup about every 2 weeks.  Amanda spreads the full backups
over the 2 week backup period.  So the daily load for full
backups is 100GB/14 or about 8GB.  Plus you have some daily
load for incrementals.  Only you and future experience can
say what that will be.  But say it is only about 1GB.

I'd consider dividing each disk into about 300 slots of about
4GB.  That means an average days run would use 3 slots but
the last one would not be full.  On light days, fewer slots
would be used and on heavy days more.

Number them sequentially something-0001 to something-1500.
Or if you prefer something-01-001 to something-05-300.

When your 3 months are up, just switch disks not worrying
about unused slots.  Amanda keeps track of used and available
and doesn't care about actual sequential order.

If that scenario doesn't fit, work out a scheme with your
numbers.

> 
> 2.  The slots I've created on the hard drive are 25 (I'm just  
> following an example).  Do I need more slots for the capacity of the  
> drive, or will these slots be reused?
> 
 
 See above

> 3.  Eventually these sets will begin to be overwritten when the 5  
> quarter (15 month) cycle is completed.  How do I reclaim a set to  
> start new backups to it?

Just plug it in.

> 
> 4.  I want to filter files like sockets, logs, media files, etc.   
> Where are filters defined?  (I'm hoping it's on the server.)
> 

man amanda.conf   See include/exclude.


-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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