Re: amanda planner and level 0 promotion

[Ned Danieley]

On Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 03:02:05PM -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 08:33:42AM -0500, Ned Danieley wrote:
> > 
> > and on the other side of the coin, is there any way to encourage the planner
> > to do more level 0 dumps in a given day?
> > 
> > I occasionally find, often after a kernel update/reboot, that amanda
> > thinks that a large number of DLE are 'new', and fairly quickly moves them 
> > up
> > to level 2. but then the planner leaves them at L2 for days or weeks, at the
> > same time using less than 1 TB of my 2.5 TB tape.
> > 
> > I know that I can force a level 0, but that has to be done on each DLE. it
> > seems like there should be a way to tell just amanda to use a larger
> > fraction of the tape, but I can't figure it out.
> > 
> 
> As an ideal, amanda tries to get consistant size dumps
> each run of amdump.  As an approximation this size can be
> estimated (using post-compression data) as the sum of
> all level 0's divided by the number of runs per dumpcycle
> plus the average daily level 1 sizes.
> 
> So you can get larger runs by three means, get more data
> (bigger level 0's), become more active (bigger level 1's)
> or shorten the dumpcycle (or runs/dumpcycle).

okay, that's what I wanted to know. I'll try shortening the dumpcycle.
thanks

-- 
Ned Danieley (ned.danie...@duke.edu)
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Box 90281, Duke University
Durham, NC  27708   (919) 660-5111

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-02-11/

Re: amanda planner and level 0 promotion

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 30 December 2017 15:02:05 Jon LaBadie wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 08:33:42AM -0500, Ned Danieley wrote:
> > and on the other side of the coin, is there any way to encourage the
> > planner to do more level 0 dumps in a given day?
> >
> > I occasionally find, often after a kernel update/reboot, that amanda
> > thinks that a large number of DLE are 'new', and fairly quickly
> > moves them up to level 2. but then the planner leaves them at L2 for
> > days or weeks, at the same time using less than 1 TB of my 2.5 TB
> > tape.
> >
> > I know that I can force a level 0, but that has to be done on each
> > DLE. it seems like there should be a way to tell just amanda to use
> > a larger fraction of the tape, but I can't figure it out.
>
> As an ideal, amanda tries to get consistant size dumps
> each run of amdump.  As an approximation this size can be
> estimated (using post-compression data) as the sum of
> all level 0's divided by the number of runs per dumpcycle
> plus the average daily level 1 sizes.
>
> So you can get larger runs by three means, get more data
> (bigger level 0's), become more active (bigger level 1's)
> or shorten the dumpcycle (or runs/dumpcycle).
>
> Sounds like you may want to shorten your dumpcycle.
>
> Note, dumpcycle is a "dumptype" parameter.  I.e. thought
> there is a global default value for dumpcycle, new dump-
> types can be defined with a different dumpcycle.
>
> In my case I have my photos and my music backed up in
> their own DLEs, 5 DLEs in the case of photos.  These are
> nearly static DLEs, so no need to back them up each week.
> I defined a separate dumptype to have a 3 week dumpcycle
> and these 6 DLEs use that dumptype.
>
> You may want to define a dumptype for your more precious
> DLEs with a shorter dumpcycle which will cause them to
> be dumped at level 0 more frequently.  Or just shorten
> your default dumpcycle.
>
Since a 10 day cycle was no help, I had several weeks back, gone back to 
a 7 day cycle. We'll see how that works with your PM'd settings.
I assume I should watch the df report, currently:
 /dev/sdc2  960798056 
668360948 243624668  74% /amandatapes

And that shows that commenting that stuff out helps, it was 88% a month 
ago. We'll see which way it tends in the next week or 4. I can, at that 
level of drive usage, put off swapping the 1TB for a 2TB I took out of a 
milling machine when I put a 60GB SSD in it. Those things are FAST! No 
mount, its just hanging on the cable. I need to round up some more of 
those, and some 3.5" mount adapters. Even 60Gigs is overkill for a 
milling machine unless using a code generator, as they generate 
megabytes of code that I can write by hand that does the same thing in 
60 lines of gcode. Probably to a higher accuracy. Both are better than 
the machine, but...

> Jon

Have a better 2018, Jon, and thanks.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: amanda planner and level 0 promotion

[Jon LaBadie]

On Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 08:33:42AM -0500, Ned Danieley wrote:
> 
> and on the other side of the coin, is there any way to encourage the planner
> to do more level 0 dumps in a given day?
> 
> I occasionally find, often after a kernel update/reboot, that amanda
> thinks that a large number of DLE are 'new', and fairly quickly moves them up
> to level 2. but then the planner leaves them at L2 for days or weeks, at the
> same time using less than 1 TB of my 2.5 TB tape.
> 
> I know that I can force a level 0, but that has to be done on each DLE. it
> seems like there should be a way to tell just amanda to use a larger
> fraction of the tape, but I can't figure it out.
> 

As an ideal, amanda tries to get consistant size dumps
each run of amdump.  As an approximation this size can be
estimated (using post-compression data) as the sum of
all level 0's divided by the number of runs per dumpcycle
plus the average daily level 1 sizes.

So you can get larger runs by three means, get more data
(bigger level 0's), become more active (bigger level 1's)
or shorten the dumpcycle (or runs/dumpcycle).

Sounds like you may want to shorten your dumpcycle.

Note, dumpcycle is a "dumptype" parameter.  I.e. thought
there is a global default value for dumpcycle, new dump-
types can be defined with a different dumpcycle.

In my case I have my photos and my music backed up in
their own DLEs, 5 DLEs in the case of photos.  These are
nearly static DLEs, so no need to back them up each week.
I defined a separate dumptype to have a 3 week dumpcycle
and these 6 DLEs use that dumptype.

You may want to define a dumptype for your more precious
DLEs with a shorter dumpcycle which will cause them to
be dumped at level 0 more frequently.  Or just shorten
your default dumpcycle.

Jon
-- 
Jon H. LaBadie j...@jgcomp.com
 11226 South Shore Rd.  (703) 787-0688 (H)
 Reston, VA  20190  (703) 935-6720 (C)