So long-
-and thanks for all the tape... I've moved on to backups using a single LTO-2 drive instead of this Sony DDS3 auto-loader. As backup needs and approaches have changed (and the engineering dept. will use the changer from now on, most likely), I say 'goodbye' to Amanda for now. Ever since I learned 'Let Amanda do her own thing, and all will be well...' (the 'Zen of Amanda,' I call it), I've been quite pleased with Amanda's performance. So as I leave Amanda for now, I'd just like to say how pleased I've been. Once I got her set up and running, I haven't had to worry about things since, something I haven't really had from any other backup software I've used. Great piece of software here... I will recommend Amanda to folks I run across in the future, and if anyone out there needs help/advice regarding the Sony TSL-S9000L DDS-3 external auto-loader (even had to pop the cover and fiddle with the guts of it fairly recently), feel free to send me e-mail.
Sloooow IBM drive...
Just recently purchased an IBM 200/400G LTO-2 (internal) drive. And the sucker is -SLOW-. Amtapetype ran for over 24 hours and didn't finish. I'm running the Bacula tape test util right now for a full tape write, and in the past... 21 hours, it's progressed to 14G, and reporting a rate of around 200 KB/s. Now, for a drive that reads 'up to 35MB/sec native data transfer rate (70 MB/sec with 2:1 compression)' for sustained data transfer rate on the product datasheet (I know, I know, 'marketing speak' and all... But one has to admit, there's a -huge- discrepency between 35 MB/s and 200 KB/s. -.- ), that's a -slow- drive we have. So, I was wondering. Has anyone else had experience with this particular drive model before? Are they all this slow, or did we just get 'lucky' here...? (Before it's asked, no, the SCSI controller is not throttled. While it's tweaked down on the secondary SCSI chain (external DDS-3 changer), the primary has not had any limiting done on it.)
Re: Recommendation for tape drives
(Hmmm, forgot to Cc: this to the list...) As Brian's mentioned, Amanda is designed to handle full and incremental backups on her own (yes, I refer to Amanda as 'her,' I'm one of those 'anthropomorphing' types...). Where, yes, it may be a bit harder for you as a human to track (not being able to say 'Yes, there was a full backup of everyone last X'), Amanda handles this load balancing between full and incremental backups well, is good at her internal management, and when needed for a restoration, she'll tell you what tapes she needs. This allows you to have a collection of tapes of uniform size, rather than keeping track of different sized tapes for different backup levels. Coming from the world of Arkeia, I was of the 'everything has full backup at the same time' opinion myself. But after some gentle drubbing about the head from other folk on the list, I came to understand the Zen of Amanda: 'Let Amanda do her own thing, and all will be well.' I've been happy with how Amanda handles her backups ever since... It really is a question of what you need. While Amanda is great for (imho, ymmv of course) changer devices, desktop backups (to recover from user 'ooops' mistakes, all backups maintained on site), there are some things she may not be the best for (ie. say, server backups, when you need to take tapes off location w/ full backups in case of fire/flood/etc and want to cram as much full backup on as few tapes as possible). While Amanda -can- do this with some tweaking, it isn't necessarily what she was designed for, so another tool designed with that mentality may be better. Me, I run Arkeia for server backups (only 3 servers that absolutely -have- to be backed up off site, so the 'Lite' version fits the bill quite nicely), and Amanda for desktop backups (via Samba mounts) that stay in-house for a 4-week cycle of tapes. Figure out your backup/restore/storage/retention/etc. needs, and work from there. Do you need storage off site? Then maybe software with more strict full and incremental delineations would be better. Are backups going to be kept on site and/or you need instant access to them at any given time? Then maybe the load-balancing of Amanda would be better to help with tape management. Or perhaps a mix of the two... Determine what you need, then find the best tools for those needs. As for tape drives, you asking about a range smack dab between my own experience areas (DDS-3 and -4, and LTO-2), so I can't give you much help there... Best of luck getting it all figured out...
Re: Sony_AIT_Library_LIB_D81_A3EU or other streamer
We have several Sony AIT3 drives, and previously used Sony AIT2 drives.
Only had one problem (one drive refused to eject a tape, had to get
the drive replaced under warranty and got the tape back undamaged).
I've never used Sony's changers, so I can't say anything about those
(ours are Qualstars, never had a problem with them).
And though I haven't had any experience with AIT drives, I've been working
with a Sony changer for some time. Sony TSL-9000, 8-tape DDS-3 external.
It's been chugging away faithfully, writing to tape every day, for at
least 5 years now ('at least' because it was purchased and put in place
two network admins ago, so I don't have a really clear idea exactly when).
Glad I found Amanda for it, it had been working from a set of kludgey
scripts for years previously...
In our own search, and with feedback from the list, my manager and I are
thinking of LTO-2 for own own hardware upgrade. We have eyes currently on
IBM Ultrium tape drives, either the 3580 single-tape, or the 3581
auto-loader (as there's '-only- a $4k difference between the two' in the
words of my manager). I'm kinda pushing for the auto-loader myself, so I
can keep using Amanda (though I say it's 'for future capacity expansion
options,' of course. ;) ).
--
Daniel Bentley - Network Technician, QSI Corporation (www.qsicorp.com)
Exploits care not whence the clicks come...
[OT] Tape changer recommendations
The boss has just decreed that we need to increase retention for desktop backups, and has noted that we've been very good financially and need to spend more of our budget to keep it out of the hands of Uncle Sam. ;) So, anyone have suggestions on external changer devices, 8 tape capacity? Any brands/model families you would particularly recommend, or would recommend we -avoid-? Also, as we've been dealing exlcusively with DDS here, what are pros- and cons- of the different media formats (AIT, DLT, LTO, etc) (linkage is appreciated too, I'm sure I'm not the first to ask this)? Any thoughts/recommendations on larger capacity single-drive devices, rather than a multi-tape configuration? Our current changer is only an old DDS-3 Sony STL-9000 (1 tape a day), so using a large tape over the course of a week certainly isn't beyond the realm of possibility as well... Sorry to send this out to the Amanda list, I just figure it's one of the better collectives of tape-device users to ask... -- Daniel Bentley - Network Technician, QSI Corporation (www.qsicorp.com) Exploits care not whence the clicks come...
Amanda drive read errors
Here's a summary of the situation: we have Server 1 and Server 2. Server 1 is the tape backup server, Server 2 is a 'jack of all trades' backup server for the Servers 1-x (is case of catastrophic failure, Server 2 can be booted up to take the place of Server X, has configs for all other servers, certain trees from the other servers are synced up on a regular basis). Server 2 has been reinstalled with Server 1 configuration, and is currently substituting for Server 1. Amanda was installed onto Server 2 independently, then the (working) configs from Server 1 were mirrored to Server 2. I have access to the changer and can preform changer functions just fine through Amanda. The problems come with Amanda actually -reading- tapes... With the configs and tape sets from the working Server 1 config, Amanda on Server 2 apparently cannot read the tape labels, untils like 'amcheck' and 'amtape' come up with 'not an amanda tape' when trying to read the label. I've then had errors with re-labeling tapes. Where 'amlabel -f config label' is supposed to label the current tape, 'amtape config show' lists -ALL- tapes in the changer as having the same label. o.o So I then specified by individual slots, 'amlabel -f config label5 slot 5' followed by 'amlabel -f config label6 slot 6.' 'amtape config show' showed the results correctly (slots 5 and 6 labeled properly). But when I ran 'amlabel -f config label7 slot 7,' 'amtape config show' reported all tapes in the drive with label7. @.@ For further reference, Server 1 is running Mandrake (Pro.) 9.2, and Server 2 is running Mandrake (Download Ed.) 10.0 (which is why I installed a fresh copy of Amanda on Server 2). Any thoughts, anyone running Mandrake 10.0 themselves and notice anything odd with how Amanda behaves...? -- Daniel Bentley - Network Technician, QSI Corporation (www.qsicorp.com) Exploits care not whence the clicks come...
(OT) Sony SDT-9000
Have an old Sony SDT-9000 drive that I've had to do a manual eject on (as in, use a screwdriver with the Loading/Threading motor access point on the bottom of the drive to eject the tape). This is some time ago, and we were upgrading to an SDT-11000 anyway, so the drive has been shelved since. It is quite out of warranty (and was when this happened). Recently, I've dug it back out to see what can be done. The tape loading mechanism will physically load and eject tapes fine, and the drive itself reports via 'mt' and Sony's own 'sonytape' program. However, when a tape is inserted, it is loaded, then the drive comes up with the 'Waiting for Eject' LED code. Commands accessing the tape (ie. 'mtx dev status') would simply go zombie, and refused to be killed until hitting the eject button on the front of the drive. As the manual gives the last step of the 'Emergency Cassette Removal Procedure' as 'Return the drive to a service station for repair,' I wonder if there's something 'tripped' in the drive itself, where the drive automatically goes to 'Waiting for Eject' status. I have upgraded the firmware in the thought that might reset the drive, but to no avail (though it no longer goes zombie when trying to access the tape, commands like 'mt rewind' come back with 'Input/output error' and 'mt status' reports: SCSI 2 tape drive: File number=-1, block number=-1, partition=0. Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x0 (default). Soft error count since last status=0 General status bits on (5): IM_REP_EN -so the process doesn't go zombie, just simply doesn't see the tape...). So, any thoughts, any experiences with the Sony SDT-9000 this way? Sorry to post this to the Amanda list (it'd actually be for a second Amanda setup if I can get it up and working again), but thought it'd be a good place to find down and dirty tape drive experience like this. Replies can be off-list, thanks. -- Daniel Bentley - Network Technician, QSI Corporation (www.qsicorp.com) Exploits care not whence the clicks come...
Re: (OT) Sony SDT-9000
On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, Jon LaBadie wrote: Eject' LED code. Commands accessing the tape (ie. 'mtx dev status') would simply go zombie, and refused to be killed until hitting the eject button on the front of the drive. If I recall correctly, that unit is not a changer. The mtx command is only used to manipulate the changer part of a changer. The mt command is used to manipulate the tape drive itself. On solaris, the mt command uses an argument of offline or rewoffl to eject the tape. Erf, my bad. I meant 'mt' in the first email, not 'mtx.' The majority of command-line stuff I do is with the changer, 'mtx on the brain' I suppose... Single tape unit, yes, DDS-3. -- Daniel Bentley - Network Technician, QSI Corporation (www.qsicorp.com) Exploits care not whence the clicks come...
User size caps
Currently running Amanda for backups of desktop shares. The problem we come across is amount of tape used by certain individuals (mostly of the 'managerial persuasion'). We have asked these individuals to limit the size of data kept in their shares many times, but they always 'creep up' above this size, to the point that they start affecting the other backups, come their rotation for a full backup. Is there any way to put a 'size cap' on the amount of data being backed up from one particular source (or -all- sources, at that)? There's a big difference between 'Could you keep the size of the share you want backed up to X?' and 'There is a limit to back up sizes of X. Anything you have above this WILL NOT be backed up...' -- Daniel Bentley - Network Technician, QSI Corporation (www.qsicorp.com) Exploits care not whence the clicks come...
Re: User size caps
Isn't this situation better suited by implementing disk quota ? Unfortunately, the sources in question are Windows shares based on desktop machines. Hence our real, 'direct' control is limited to the server side (via. some kind of 'size throttling' through Amanda and/or SMB), or in creating a special 'shared backup partition' on each machine, size regulation coming from the physical size of the partition. The idea of 'size throttling' would be much more dynamic than physical partitions, but it's the 'kludgibility' of such that doesn't look too promising thusfar... -- Daniel Bentley - Network Technician, QSI Corporation (www.qsicorp.com) Exploits care not whence the clicks come...
Re: Memory requirements for Amanda Server
We are building an amanda backup server and have a question regarding memory requirements. My guess is that Amanda is more processor intensive than memory intensive. Is this correct? For a dedicated backup server that won't be doing much of anything else, is 512MB of memory enough? i have such a beast running on RedHat with 256 meg of RAM and its fine Mandrake, 128 meg of RAM, 200MHz Pentium Pro (yes, we -are- talking Socket 8 here : ). Runs Amanda for an external DDS-3 changer (desktop backups), Arkeia for an internal DDS-4 single (server backups), with Amanda and Arkeia jobs running simultaneously every night. Works like a champ. -- Daniel Bentley - Network Technician, QSI Corporation (www.qsicorp.com) chown -R us *base*
Re: Setup
I have machines on my network which are mix of windows and unix machines. Right now, I'm managing backups (both full and incremental) through perl scripts written by me. They have been working fine for quite some time now but are due for upgrade. I was planning to rewrite those scripts to make it more effecient. I know the feeling, though in my case, I inherited some seriously kludgey, 'bass-ackwards' scripts written for our tape changer many -years- before I took over as network admin... ;) Recently somebody suggested me to take a look at amanda. I looks really neat and cool to me. I have some doubts though (if it will work in my kind of setup) I will try to explain about my setup below: I have couple of linux servers and windows servers. I have indentified what shares on those servers which needs to be backed up. I will be needing one FULL backup for linux servers and another FULL for windows per week and I should also be able to run daily incremental backups for both windows and linux machines. FULL backups usually run into 15 GB and incremental close to 500 to 1 GB. Right now, I do some backups in the night and some in the mornings (data is first written to some temp space where I pick it in the mornings to write to the tape) To be honest, I would recommend you also take a look at Arkeia (http://www.arkeia.com). Arkeia Light is a free version of Arkeia (and legal for corporate use), though it is limited to a configuration of one server and two 'clients' (which can be worked around with 'creative cron jobbing,' in theory... ;) ). I find Amanda to be great for backup of our desktop shares on our autoloader (where storage/tape ratio is most important), but I prefer Arkeia for the server backups (where knowing the backup schedule and status any given day is more important than how much I can shoe-horn onto each tape). One of the main advantages of Arkeia (as compared to Amanda, for the setup you describe), is the way it handles different backup 'levels' and tape pools. For example, my current configuration: Lv. 1 is an 'every 4-weeks' backup for a set of 'monthly' tapes for rotation to off-site storage, Lv. 2 is a weekly (every Fri. except for when 'monthly' tapes run) full backup, and Lv. 3 is a daily backup of files that have been modified since the last full weekly. We have 16 daily tapes (4 tapes/week (Mon. - Thurs.) * 4 weeks), 3 weekly tapes (for Fri. of the first 3 weeks in the cycle), and 13 'monthly' tapes (for the fourth week of the cycle, roughly monthly). Basically, I find Arkeia's configuration scheme to be great for setting up more 'calendar-reliant' schedules, and the GUI they provide is a good tool for configuration (and I'm a vi fan at heart ;) ). Certainly no offense intended towards Amanda fans/users/maintainers (my Sony TSL-9000 would be wasted without Amanda), but I try to call 'em as I see 'em, 'best tool for the job' and all that rot... --- Daniel Bentley - Network Administrator, QSI Corporation (www.qsicorp.com) chown -R us *base*
Multiple backup groups
I'm fairly new to Amanda, having set up hardware configurations, some small test backups (including some samba mounts), and generally getting things ready for a full transfer over to Amanda (getting away from a bunch of custom-made scripts kludged together 4 or so years ago). Hardware is configured and working, backups work, only thing remaining is to get the actual backup scheduling hammered out. Here's what I would like to do: Groups: A, B, C Schedule: Mon - Grp. A, Tues - Grp. B, Wed - Grp. C, Thurs - Grp. A, Fri - Grp. B, Sat - Grp. C So far, it looks like I need to create 3 different configurations with their appropriate disklists, and their own tapelists (let's call the configs QSI1, QSI2, and QSI3). It would appear when QSI1 runs, that QSI2 doesn't know what tape QSI1 used (as it keeps it's own history in the QSI1 file path). Now, amanda.conf has entries for 'infofile', 'indexdir', etc. If I point all 3 configs to one directory for common files, could I then 'share' the tape tracking and info between them? Would having 3 different 'tapelist' files bring up conflicts with tracking? If anyone else has done something like this or has suggestions on other ways I could accomplish what I'd like to do, I'd greatly appreciate hearing. Thanks for your time! -- Daniel Bentley - Network Technician, QSI Corporation (www.qsicorp.com) chown -R us *base*
Multiple backup groups (explained)
Okay, here's the reasoning behind the situation I presented.
Groups A, B, and C are collections of samba shares on individual desktops.
As things stand, A, B, and C are defined by the current backup scripts so
that they equal right around 10G each. A total of 30G to be backed up.
It needs to be the full 30G, as management has INSISTED on full backups
for these 30G (not only on full backups, but due to the fact that no
writable Samba shares are allowed (even passworded), Amanda can't keep
track for incrementals since it can't have write access to the shares
(according to /docs/SAMBA).
The tape changer is a Sony TSL-9000, with 7 12G DDS3 tapes. A total of
~12G physical media available for backup daily (since Amanda doesn't
spread one dump over multiple tapes, as I understand things. However,
this is according to /docs/MULTITAPE that has the note 'Draft 1 - jds
3/29/94' (using Amanda 2.4.4). If this has been remedied, I'd certainly
love to hear it...).
As people stay late and come in early at various, random times, we have a
time frame of 5 hours to run the backup in. Even if it is possible to
span Amanda dumps over multiple tapes, 30G would push the backup time
well over 5 hours (Amanda clocked the drive at 'speed 948 kbytes' at
setup, averages around 1100 k/s during backups).
Thus, I can do 10G a day, a lil' over 2 hours a day, have each group being
backed up twice a week, and even keep a set schedule as it currently is
('Make absolutely sure you leave your machine on on days X and Y, that's
when it'll be backed up').
Now, is there a way to do something like this with Amanda, a way to define
set groups like this via different configs and share the same pool of
tapes? Is there a way where I can indeed tell Amanda '30G of people to
backup, do only 10G a day, but make sure every one is backed up at least
twice in one week'?
--
Daniel Bentley - Network Technician, QSI Corporation (www.qsicorp.com)
chown -R us *base*
