I agree, but the caveat is that the planner will do its darndest to make full 
use of the extended capacity of the LTO4 cartridge.

In my case, our backups went from between 5 and 8 hours with LTO2 tapes to well 
over 24 hours in some cases with the LOT4s - same DLEs.  It took some fancy 
footwork to get it to a reasonable window (about the same length of time as 
with the 2s but some of the larger DLEs are forced to incremental on weekdays). 
 This is so we can get the cartridges ready for pickup by our offsite storage 
provider.

 
Steve Onotsky
Server Support Technologist
Broadridge
Investor Communication Solutions, Canada
5970 Chedworth Way
Mississauga  ON  L5R 4G5
Tel: (905) 507-5328
Fax: (905) 507-5312
Inet: steve.onotsky AT broadridge DOT com
 
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
- Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347
 
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org [mailto:owner-amanda-users AT amanda 
DOT org] On Behalf Of Chris Hoogendyk
Sent: May 14, 2009 12:53
To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Subject: Re: Amanda and dual tape libraries.



McGraw, Robert P wrote:
> I have a tape library (38) unit with one lto2 tape unit and one empty
> tape slot.
>
> I need to speed up our backups.
>
> One option is to purchase a second tape unit but not sure how Amanda
> works with a two tape drives. I searched the wiki for information but
> did not get any hits. 
>
> I am going to upgrade to the latest Amanda version so the version should
> not be a problem.
>
> Can Amanda use multiple tape drives for a backup? I want to put complete
> backup files on a tape and not strip the tapes.

If you are looking for speed and thinking of upgrading, then why not get 
an LTO4 drive to put in your library and switch to that? Assuming your 
backup system can drive it at full speed, that would be 3 times as fast 
as the LTO2 drive and would be able to read the LTO2 tapes. Of course, 
it would require transitioning to LTO4 tapes, but that's going to give 
you 4 times the capacity.

Another option is larger holding disks (or a holding array), backing 
everything to there on its way to the tape.

Do your backup reports indicate that the taping speed is the bottleneck?

My library is AIT5, which isn't as fast as LTO. When a DLE is being 
written to tape, my system can drive the tape at full speed. However, 
the tape drive spends a lot of time idle, as the bottleneck on my system 
is traffic over the network and the busyness of the other servers that 
are being backed up. I have large enough spool drives that the backup 
activity is going to until it accumulates and is ready for taping.


-- 
---------------

Chris Hoogendyk

-
   O__  ---- Systems Administrator
  c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
 (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst 

<hoogendyk AT bio.umass DOT edu>

--------------- 

Erdös 4


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