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Re: [Amanda-users] Advice needed on Linux backup strategy to LTO-4 tape
2009-08-14 11:05:36
Hi,
Here's my (very) small personnal experience:
A few years ago, when I tried it, I couldn't
enable server-side software compression while bypassing the holding disk
with my IBM ULTIUM LTO-3 drive: Tape speed was sinking to about 5MB/s.
My backup server was a Dell PowerEdge 2850
with 4 Intel Xeon 3GHz and 8MB RAM using RHEL-4.0 and amanda-2.4.4p3-1.
Maybe did I do something wrong at that time
(I just had 1 try). Beware though.
Cyrille
owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org wrote on 14/08/2009
15:57:45:
> Hi Chris
>
> On 13/08/09, Chris Hoogendyk (hoogendyk AT bio.umass DOT edu) wrote:
> > ... the solution is akin to the Japanese monks caring for Bonzai....
>
> I liked this idea about tape archives -- constant pruning and
> maintenance. Difficult to sell though.
>
> > As for your specific questions:
> >
> > You should be able to do LVM snapshots. I use fssnap on Solaris
9 and
> > 10, and scanning through, here are just a couple of references
I find
> > to people using LVM snapshots with Amanda:
> <snip>
> > With the latest releases of Amanda, there is a new API that could
make
> > it even easier to implement.
>
> Great; thanks for the pointers.
>
> > Typically, we set up Amanda with holding disk space.
> <snip>
>
> If all the storage is locally attached (actually, AoE drives storage
> units connected over Ethernet), I am hoping to avoid the disk space
if I
> can write to tape fast enough. I'd like to avoid paying for up to
15TB
> of fast holding disk space if I can avoid it.
>
> > Compression can be done either on the client, on the server,
or on
> > the tape drive. Obviously, if you use software compression, you
want
> > to turn off the tape drive compression. I use server side
> > compression, because I have a dedicated Amanda server that can
> > handle it. By not using the tape drive compression, Amanda has
more
> > complete information on data size and tape usage for its planning.
> > If your server is more constrained than your clients, you could
use
> > client compression. This is specified in your dumptypes in your
> > amanda.conf.
>
> I don't have any clients, so this is an interesting observation. I'll
be
> trying to do sofware compression then I think. The Unix backup book
> (google for "amanda software compression") suggests that
compression can
> be used on a "per-image basis"; presumably I can pass the
backup data
> stream through gzip or bzip2 on the way to a tape?
>
> > Deduplication is not available with Amanda. However, some people
> > stage different kinds of tools and use Amanda for the final staging
> > and management of tapes and archives. So, in some situations,
> > BackupPC could be used to do deduplication from, say, desktop
> > clients to a server archive which is then backed up by Amanda.
That
> > could start complicating your 12 year recovery scenario and what
> > happens when software is not available or doesn't run.
>
> Great -- thanks for the details.
>
> > Amanda uses the term "index" rather than "catalog"
-- see
> > http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Amanda_Index.
> >
> > Note that if you are putting tapes into a long term archive with
no
> > intent of recycling them in subsequent backups, you can use amadmin
> > to mark them as no-reuse. I periodically (typically at the end
of
> > semesters) do a force full, mark the tapes as no-reuse, and then
> > pull them out of my tapecycle and put them in storage.
>
> Very useful again, thanks.
>
> Regards
> Rory
> --
> Rory Campbell-Lange
> Director
> rory AT campbell-lange DOT net
>
> Campbell-Lange Workshop
> www.campbell-lange.net
> 0207 6311 555
> 3 Tottenham Street London W1T 2AF
> Registered in England No. 04551928
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