Re: Which backup prog?
Quoting Martin F Krafft <krafft@ailab.ch>:
> I have a new LTO-2 drive here, a 400 Gb capacity, and the challenge
> to design a backup algorithm for a mission-critical groupware
> server. This is a single system, so no network backup...
>
> I have 10 tapes and was thinking of doing weekly full backups and
> daily incremental snapshots. This will keep backups around for 10
> weeks, and we could get a new tap each month to keep one around from
> the past. Of course, I would be happy for advice from more
> experience here.
>
[snip]
> amanda seems to be able to do it all, but it's highly complex.
>
[snip]
Go for AMANDA. If you try to understand it all at once, it is
intimidating. At first, all you need to understand is the
configuration file and amdump. These two URLs help.
http://www.amanda.org/
http://www.backupcentral.com/amanda.html
I do twice monthly full backups with off-site storage. Two tape sets
so there is always as least one set off-site. Daily rolling
full/incremental backups. Typical use is to divide up the task by
partition (assuming a partition will fit on one tape). Each partition
is backed up fully once per tape cycle and then backed up
incrementally until its turn comes in the rotation. Generally each
daily backup will have one or more full partition backups and the rest
incremental. You can use sub-directories or other divisions instead
of partitions. Compression ratios with tar as the low level client do
average around 2:1. For capacity planning, I used 1.5:1 which turns
out to be too conservative.
I am backing up a Linux workstation/server, two Linux servers, a Linux
laptop, and a Windows 98 desktop over a 100Mbps Ethernet network to a
Seagate TR-5 (AKA NS20) IDE Travan drive. Full backups take 3-3.5
hours and take one tape (i.e., run unattended). Daily runs are at
3am. Load on the backup server is significant during backups. The
load on the clients is noticeable, but not severe. I can play Quake
III on the server until it actually starts writing to tape. Having a
big disk buffer space available helps.
HTH,
Jeffrey
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