At Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:29:30 +0200 Andreas Sundstrom <sun...@zappa.cx> wrote:
> > I'm probably using quite ancient versions of amanda (using Debian, and > due to a kerberos problem I'm still on 2.5.2p1). > Anyway.. > > I want to use external disks instead of tapes for my backups. I don't > like having the disks connected all the time since it would be possible > for them to be erased when they are connected. > > So I would like to use the disks kind of like normal tapes, and swap the > disk(s) every now and then. > Each disk could possible house several vtapes of big enough size. > > Are there other people running like this, or do I need to figure out how > to do this on my own? > What I don't understand after reading the howto-filedriver.txt is if it > would work when I have multiple vtapes on separate disks and therefor > only some of the vtapes available at any one time (depending on which > disk is mounted) Amanda does not really care if some of the vtapes are actually available on-line or not. When doing backups, it just looks for the next available, reusable tape. The two (or more) removable disks should be mounted at the same mount point and have the same basic directory structure. Initialize the removable disks with a different set of tape labels (using amlabel). That is, if each removable disks has a virtual tape changer with 10 tapes (slots 1 to 10), the first removable disk would have those tapes labeled backupdisk1-1 through backupdisk1-10 and the second removable disk would have those tapes labeled backupdisk2-1 through backupdisk2-10, and so on. When amcheck / ambackup runs and if the first removable disk is mounted, it will backup to backupdisk1-<mumble> and record this in the logs. When you swap disks, it will see tapes backupdisk2-1 through backupdisk2-10 and use one (or more) of these for its backups. Its tape database will still 'know' about the vtapes on the other backup disk -- this is useful should you need to do a restore, in which case you might need to swapd disks. This is really no different than if you have an actual tape changer and someone (eg the backup operator) swapped all of the tapes with a fresh batch and labeled (with amlabel) them with fresh labels. Presumably, the old ones would be retained or recycled or whatever, either for long-term off-site backup or because the tapes are too worn to be reliable, etc. I have the tapes on my backup disk (and the one at the Wendell Free Library) set up to be just the right size for burning on DVD-Rs (and the chunk size set to be compatible with ISO-9660 file system limitations). I have a Tcl script that 'vaults' (yes, I am using CentOS 5 and also an older version of amanda) full backups to DVDs. I then relabel the full backups virtual tapes with new labels (I do this in a way that lets amanda think the full backups virtual tapes are still arround somewhere -- they are in the form of DVD-Rs). If you are interested, I can send you the script. > > > Any ideas, or pointers in the right direction are welcome > > Thanks > /Andreas > > -- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 / hel...@deepsoft.com Deepwoods Software -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ () ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments
