Re: [OT] Backup solutions - my preferences
On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 10:02:58PM -0500, Bob Paige wrote:
> >Haven't used amanda, have you? Just set yourself up with a
> >decent-sized holding disk and it's not a problem. (Your backups will
> >finish fast, too.) My amanda server at work can easily run a week's
> >worth of backups without needing a tape, just saving it all up on the
> >holding disk. Just be sure the holding disk is a separate physical
> >device to minimize the chance of losing it if the system's primary
> >drive fails.
>
> I would like to use CDR instead of tape, but I've heard that Amanda
> requires you to use a new tape for each session (good or bad).
That is correct. You can't count on a tape to still be where you
left it if you relinquish control of it for even a moment, so amanda
rewinds the tape and starts from the beginning each time.
However, the latest version of amanda sounds like it has explicit
backup-to-disk support (according to what I've read on the amanda
mailing list), which might work a little better with CDRs.
> If I wait
> until the end of the week, assuming I've accumulated only 500-600MB of
> changes, will it back it all up onto the single CDR?
It could, but it's not quite how amanda is designed to work. In
normal operation, amanada puts some full backups and some
incrementals onto each tape with the objective of equalizing the
amount of data on each tape.
> What if it
> accumulated more than would fit on a disk, would it span multiple disks?
Amanda can spread a backup run across multiple tapes, but cannot span
tapes within a single disklist entry.
> Also, if you wait until the end of the week, does Amanda keep multiple
> generations of the files modified during that week in the holding disk,
> or only the most recent modification?
Amanda ignores the fact that the backups will not be going to tape
so, assuming you run it each night, you will get a version of each
file for each day on which is was changed (and for each day that its
disklist entry has a full backup, of course).
--
The freedoms that we enjoy presently are the most important victories of the
White Hats over the past several millennia, and it is vitally important that
we don't give them up now, only because we are frightened.
- Eolake Stobblehouse (http://stobblehouse.com/text/battle.html)
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