Apologies that this email doesn't have the correct threading ID. I
posted through Backup Central originally and I can't get hold of the
original mails on the Amanda users list since subscribing properly to it
-- the advertised ftp archives don't seem to exist any more.

Many thanks to Chris, Charles and Jon about their commentary about using
Amanda to provide a long-term archive format. The points about being
able to use standard Unix tools to retrieve information is well made, as
is the point that the current machines and architectures may not be
around in 12 years' time. Thanks very much for those points.

I'd like to return the other part of my question if I may:

> 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. 

I'd be grateful to learn specifically if the approach I have set out
seems feasible. Also:

    - is the snapshot volume or secondary holding pool advisable?
    - is compression / deduplication possible?
    - after scanning through the wiki I can't see any references to what
      I think of as a backup job "catalogue". How does one know what
      files were part of a particular backup job?

Thanks for any further advice.

Rory


-- 
Rory Campbell-Lange
Director
rory AT campbell-lange DOT net

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