On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 06:17:17PM -0400, rorycl wrote:
> 
> I'm going to cross-post this text on the Amanda and Bacula lists.
> Apologies in advance if you see this twice.
> 
> Our company is about to provide centralised backups for several pools of
> backup data of between 1 and 15TB in size. Each pool changes daily but
> backups to tape will only occur once a month for each pool.
> 
> The backup tape format is to be LT04 and we have a second-hand Dell
> PowerVault 124T 16 tape autoloader to work with currently. Backup from a
> pool may be taken off a Linux LVM (or hopefully soon a BTRFS) snapshot
> ensuring that the source data does not change during the backup process.
> We have the possibility of pre-preparing backup or compressed images if
> this is advisable.
> 
> An important aspect of the system is that the tapes should be readable
> for 12 years, by other parties if necessary. From this point of view we
> like the idea of providing a CD with each tape set of the software
> needed to extract the contents, together with a listing of the enclosed
> files in a UTF8 text file. We will be required to audit each backup set
> by successfully extracting files from tape.

Others have mentioned that even without amanda software, amanda backups
are recoverable with standard unix/linux tools.

I question whether the concept of providing the software is reasonable.
Programs are compiled for a particular environment, versions of libraries,
devices, operating system, etc.  Amanda software, compiled for today's
systems, is unlikely to be able to run on systems a dozen years from now.
What systems were around in 1997?  Many instances of them still running?  

So maybe you should provide a complete OS distribution, including the backup
software.  Like a customized version of one of the "live CD" releases of
Linux.  But wait, will that distribution's included device drivers work on
the devices that will exist in 12 years?  Will that era's computers still
have CD drives.  Will they be bootable?

This requirement may take some additional thought.

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