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)

amanda planner and level 0 promotion

[Ned Danieley]

On Fri, Dec 29, 2017 at 07:01:05PM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> >
> While we are on this subject, why, with a 10 day cycle, working over 30 
> vtapes of nominally 3.2 GB per vtape, does amanda's planner absolutely 
> refuse to use a level 2 or beyond?  It often promotes a level 2 to a 
> level 0 when it has 6+ days left in its 10 day cycle.
...
> 
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett

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.

-- 
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/