Chris,

Amanda uses "chunksize" to break a DLE in the holding area down
into managable pieces (you can set the chunksize per holding area).

You do not need single spindle holding areas that are large enough
to contain whole DLEs (anymore, at one time this was true).

You do still want a large enough holding area (combined) to allow
some concurrency in dumping, but if I understand your question it
has been rendered a non-issue.

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 01:52:26PM -0400, Chris Hoogendyk wrote:
> So, after 3 years of pressure and inadequate backups, my one department 
> that never has enough money to do anything has finally bought a tape 
> library. I'm setting it up on the existing server, because they can't 
> afford the other components to set up an Amanda backup server (even 
> though I have a hand-me-down server with no disk drives). I've scrounged 
> space on a few drives for holding disk space, but there's no symmetry in 
> size, and the smaller ones won't do for the larger DLE's.
> 
> So, the question is, if Amanda has more than one holding disk 
> (partition), and they differ in size, will Amanda know when the smaller 
> one is inadequate for a particular DLE and explicitly choose the larger 
> one? Also, if I have specified spindle numbers in my disklist, so that 
> Amanda will avoid doing parallel dumps from the same spindle, is there 
> any way of informing Amanda of the spindle numbers for the holding disks 
> (partitions) and taking that into account in the planning?
> 
> For this department, at the moment, I don't have the luxery of more than 
> one dedicated drive for holding disk space. So, given the possible 
> chance of backing up a DLE to a holding disk partition that is on the 
> same spindle as the DLE, is it likely to work better just to rearrange 
> space and coalesce it on one holding disk? My idea had been to share 
> disks and trade part of this disk for part of another so that dumps 
> could be using more than one spindle for holding space.
> 
> TIA
> 
> -- 
> ---------------
> 
> Chris Hoogendyk
> 
> -
>   O__  ---- Systems Administrator
>  c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
> (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
> ~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst 
> 
> <hoogendyk AT bio.umass DOT edu>
> 
> --------------- 
> 
> Erd�s 4
> 
> 
---
   Brian R Cuttler                 brian.cuttler AT wadsworth DOT org
   Computer Systems Support        (v) 518 486-1697
   Wadsworth Center                (f) 518 473-6384
   NYS Department of Health        Help Desk 518 473-0773



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