Re: A virtual tape question
On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 01:38:07PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote: > > Next time I spend some money on a decently designed case. I'm in love > with the apple G5's and those molded plastic inserts that make sure the > air goes where its needed for cooling. OTOH, I can't afford to buy a > G5, so... We sit here and dream. > I've had great success with Antec cases myself. -- U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote - Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror - New York Times 9/3/1967
Re: A virtual tape question
On Sunday 05 February 2006 12:38, stan wrote: >On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 11:18:33AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote: >> On Sunday 05 February 2006 10:53, Ian Turner wrote: >> >On Sunday 05 February 2006 10:40 am, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: >> >> AFAIK I recommended to use separate disks for vtapes and >> >> holdingdisk. >> > >> >Why even use a holding disk at all with vtapes? It's not like >> > you're going to keep the hard disk streaming. >> >> In order to allow better scheduling and somewhat reduced >> fragmentation of the vtapes disk over time. If it can stuff it all >> onto the holding area which amanda will do if its of sufficient size >> and allowed, then the following copy does it all on one stream, and >> in sequential order, up cable0 and down cable1 in my case. >> >> Without the holding area, its possible amanda could be hammering >> several files at once to the vtape drive, thrashing its seeking >> mechanism excessively. Or it might even revert to one dump at a >> time as it would when going direct to tape with no holding disk, and >> that would be noticeably slow. I'm probably lucky as I put the >> holding disk directory on /, and / usually has well over 25GB free >> here. I don't think its ever used more than 5GB of it though. > >Intersting, I never considered putting the dumpdisk on the root disk, >I've always dedicated a physical spindle to it. But, on a machine that >is dedicated to Amanda, using / sounds like a good idea. A seperate physical spindle would be nice, but that would pack up my drive bays for a /dev/hdb, and the 2 in there now are running a bit warm according to smartd, nearly 50C. BIG tower, sides open, but even so its heat handling leaves much to be desired. Close it up and everything goes up another 15C. 3 exhaust fans counting the psu fan, 1 intake in front grill just aren't enough. Needs 2 more in front, otherwise the psu gets starved and runs too warm if I close it up... And the Zalman 'flower' takes up a lot of space too even if it is a pretty decent cpu cooler. Next time I spend some money on a decently designed case. I'm in love with the apple G5's and those molded plastic inserts that make sure the air goes where its needed for cooling. OTOH, I can't afford to buy a G5, so... We sit here and dream. -- Cheers, Gene People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Re: A virtual tape question
On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 10:43:44AM -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote: > On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 10:17:17AM -0500, stan wrote: > > I'm preparing to upgrade an existing Amanda installation. > > > > It's been a while since I looked at what Amanda can do, since the existing > > system "just works". I'm considering using virtual tapes, in some fashion > > on the new system. > > > > These leads me to a question (perhaps the first of several). Reading > > through http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/File_driver It recommends putting > > the virtual tape disk(s) on a different server than the holding disk(s). Am > > I reading this correctly? > > > > Without reading it myself, I suspect it meant different physical > disk so there would not be such contention for a single disk > for two purposes. > Indeed, once I re-read it, that is what it says. -- U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote - Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror - New York Times 9/3/1967
Re: A virtual tape question
On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 11:18:33AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote: > On Sunday 05 February 2006 10:53, Ian Turner wrote: > >On Sunday 05 February 2006 10:40 am, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: > >> AFAIK I recommended to use separate disks for vtapes and > >> holdingdisk. > > > >Why even use a holding disk at all with vtapes? It's not like you're > > going to keep the hard disk streaming. > > In order to allow better scheduling and somewhat reduced fragmentation > of the vtapes disk over time. If it can stuff it all onto the holding > area which amanda will do if its of sufficient size and allowed, then > the following copy does it all on one stream, and in sequential order, > up cable0 and down cable1 in my case. > > Without the holding area, its possible amanda could be hammering several > files at once to the vtape drive, thrashing its seeking mechanism > excessively. Or it might even revert to one dump at a time as it would > when going direct to tape with no holding disk, and that would be > noticeably slow. I'm probably lucky as I put the holding disk > directory on /, and / usually has well over 25GB free here. I don't > think its ever used more than 5GB of it though. > Intersting, I never considered putting the dumpdisk on the root disk, I've always dedicated a physical spindle to it. But, on a machine that is dedicated to Amanda, using / sounds like a good idea. -- U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote - Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror - New York Times 9/3/1967
Re: A virtual tape question
On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 10:53:43AM -0500, Ian Turner wrote: > On Sunday 05 February 2006 10:40 am, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: > > AFAIK I recommended to use separate disks for vtapes and holdingdisk. > > Why even use a holding disk at all with vtapes? It's not like you're going to > keep the hard disk streaming. I'm thinking about doing backups to disk and tape. So I can use teh disk copies for CD based archiving, and fast restore. -- U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote - Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror - New York Times 9/3/1967
Re: A virtual tape question
On Sunday 05 February 2006 10:53, Ian Turner wrote: >On Sunday 05 February 2006 10:40 am, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: >> AFAIK I recommended to use separate disks for vtapes and >> holdingdisk. > >Why even use a holding disk at all with vtapes? It's not like you're > going to keep the hard disk streaming. In order to allow better scheduling and somewhat reduced fragmentation of the vtapes disk over time. If it can stuff it all onto the holding area which amanda will do if its of sufficient size and allowed, then the following copy does it all on one stream, and in sequential order, up cable0 and down cable1 in my case. Without the holding area, its possible amanda could be hammering several files at once to the vtape drive, thrashing its seeking mechanism excessively. Or it might even revert to one dump at a time as it would when going direct to tape with no holding disk, and that would be noticeably slow. I'm probably lucky as I put the holding disk directory on /, and / usually has well over 25GB free here. I don't think its ever used more than 5GB of it though. FWIW, the holding disk area will get badly fragmented, but thats all cleaned up when the run is finished successfully so its not a long term problem at all. -- Cheers, Gene People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Re: A virtual tape question
Ian Turner schrieb: On Sunday 05 February 2006 10:40 am, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: AFAIK I recommended to use separate disks for vtapes and holdingdisk. Why even use a holding disk at all with vtapes? It's not like you're going to keep the hard disk streaming. Parallelism of dumpers. Stefan
Re: A virtual tape question
On Sunday 05 February 2006 10:40 am, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: > AFAIK I recommended to use separate disks for vtapes and holdingdisk. Why even use a holding disk at all with vtapes? It's not like you're going to keep the hard disk streaming. -- Forums for Amanda discussion: http://forums.zmanda.com/
Re: A virtual tape question
On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 04:40:01PM +0100, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: > stan schrieb: > >I'm preparing to upgrade an existing Amanda installation. > > > >It's been a while since I looked at what Amanda can do, since the existing > >system "just works". I'm considering using virtual tapes, in some fashion > >on the new system. > > > >These leads me to a question (perhaps the first of several). Reading > >through http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/File_driver It recommends putting > >the virtual tape disk(s) on a different server than the holding disk(s). Am > >I reading this correctly? > > Where did you read that? Please show me the paragraph that makes you > think that, maybe it should get rewritten. > > AFAIK I recommended to use separate disks for vtapes and holdingdisk. > This is mainly due to performance issues and not necessary. AMANDA would > also work well if vtapes AND holdingdisk share the same physical disk > although the overall speed would decrease and you also loose some > redundancy ... > > To answer your question: You don't have to use two servers, no. > > And as it happens often, in the meantime Paul has answered that one also :-) > Thanks, I've been to hasty in posting questions without having read and digested the excellent documentation at: http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/File_driver This is the paragraph that I misread: The disk space you dedicate for your vtapes should NOT be backed up by Amanda. Also, for performance reasons there should be NO holding disks on the same partition as the vtapes, preferably not even on the same physical drive. But, upon re-reading it I see that it is clear as written. My apologies! -- U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote - Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror - New York Times 9/3/1967
Re: A virtual tape question
On Sunday 05 February 2006 10:17, stan wrote: >I'm preparing to upgrade an existing Amanda installation. > >It's been a while since I looked at what Amanda can do, since the > existing system "just works". I'm considering using virtual tapes, in > some fashion on the new system. > >These leads me to a question (perhaps the first of several). Reading >through http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/File_driver It recommends > putting the virtual tape disk(s) on a different server than the > holding disk(s). Am I reading this correctly? I don't think so, Stan. But it is a very good idea to have the vtapes on a seperate cable of the controller as that will speed things up quite a bit by reducing cable contention issues. I have my vtapes on /dev/hdd, with the holdingdisk area on /dev/hda. I also have a small amount of /dev/hdd as swap, again for the same reason. Ditto /var, for somewhat the same reason, and in case /dev/hda should go read-only due to an error, I still have the log entries to tell me what went toes up. And that can be worth its weight in sliced bread or bottled beer under those conditions. :) >If so, how would I access these disks? NFS seems like a slow way of > doing this. Excruciatingly, since nfs has never worked here. :( -- Cheers, Gene People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Re: A virtual tape question
On Sun, Feb 05, 2006 at 10:17:17AM -0500, stan wrote: > I'm preparing to upgrade an existing Amanda installation. > > It's been a while since I looked at what Amanda can do, since the existing > system "just works". I'm considering using virtual tapes, in some fashion > on the new system. > > These leads me to a question (perhaps the first of several). Reading > through http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/File_driver It recommends putting > the virtual tape disk(s) on a different server than the holding disk(s). Am > I reading this correctly? > Without reading it myself, I suspect it meant different physical disk so there would not be such contention for a single disk for two purposes. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: A virtual tape question
stan schrieb: I'm preparing to upgrade an existing Amanda installation. It's been a while since I looked at what Amanda can do, since the existing system "just works". I'm considering using virtual tapes, in some fashion on the new system. These leads me to a question (perhaps the first of several). Reading through http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/File_driver It recommends putting the virtual tape disk(s) on a different server than the holding disk(s). Am I reading this correctly? Where did you read that? Please show me the paragraph that makes you think that, maybe it should get rewritten. AFAIK I recommended to use separate disks for vtapes and holdingdisk. This is mainly due to performance issues and not necessary. AMANDA would also work well if vtapes AND holdingdisk share the same physical disk although the overall speed would decrease and you also loose some redundancy ... To answer your question: You don't have to use two servers, no. And as it happens often, in the meantime Paul has answered that one also :-) Stefan
Re: A virtual tape question
stan schreef: I'm preparing to upgrade an existing Amanda installation. It's been a while since I looked at what Amanda can do, since the existing system "just works". I'm considering using virtual tapes, in some fashion on the new system. These leads me to a question (perhaps the first of several). Reading through http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/File_driver It recommends putting the virtual tape disk(s) on a different server than the holding disk(s). Am I reading this correctly? A different *disk* (could be on a different server yes) but this is no absolute requirement. Just to avoid bashing the same disk with dumping to holdingdisk and transferring to vtapes. Deciding which disk is also a matter of not putting the backup on the same disk as some of the DLE's that you try to backup: a diskcrash would lose both. If so, how would I access these disks? NFS seems like a slow way of doing this. Not always: NFS over gigabit ethernet is faster than many IDE disks. Another example: an external disk connected to USB-1 can write at about 1 Mbyte/sec -- 100 Mbit networks are faster too. -- Paul Bijnens, XplanationTel +32 16 397.511 Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUMFax +32 16 397.512 http://www.xplanation.com/ email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** * I think I've got the hang of it now: exit, ^D, ^C, ^\, ^Z, ^Q, F6, * * quit, ZZ, :q, :q!, M-Z, ^X^C, logoff, logout, close, bye, /bye, * * stop, end, F3, ~., ^]c, +++ ATH, disconnect, halt, abort, hangup, * * PF4, F20, ^X^X, :D::D, KJOB, F14-f-e, F8-e, kill -1 $$, shutdown, * * kill -9 1, Alt-F4, Ctrl-Alt-Del, AltGr-NumLock, Stop-A, ...* * ... "Are you sure?" ... YES ... Phew ... I'm out * ***
