Ok, I've subscribed to the list and have started wading through the info
and archives. Seems I never quite find the info most applicable to what
I seek. I've been using afio but people have recommended to try amanda,
so I'm looking at it.
I've got two cobalt raqs that use a form of Redhat 6.2 as o.s.
They each have a pair of 40 gig hard drives in raid 1 config. I have a
Quantum DLT 40/80. One raq is a web/email server, the other a file share
for a small business with about 10 users at present. (Low volume.) The
tape drive is plugged into a scsi port on a raq. I also have an old Dell
server with I think a 9.1 Gb scsi harddrive in it that isn't doing much.
Right now I only have about 6 tapes but plan on seeing if I can talk the
manager into another 10 at least. We need to keep a full backup offsite.
The amount of data generated per day is quite small here- probably
barely a few megs. It may grow as we add to our wan, but now it is just
about 10 users.
So a few questions:
I'm not clear on backup policies. I think a complete system backup would
be great so if I had a failure I wouldn't have to reinstall the various
programs I've needed. But perhaps this is asking too much, I don't know.
Maybe this is more the job for some kind of linux ghost? Do people just
back up user generated data?
I've got 30 gigs free so far on both Raqs but that will shrink over
time. It would be plenty for now perhaps to set up a holding disk on.
But as it fills, it would be too small for a system wide backup. Can't
add another harddrive to the raqs. So there is that old Dell server
sitting there. It doesn't have an exterior scsi port for the tape drive.
I could add perhaps a big IDE hard drive to it (a big scsi drive is too
costly for this budget operation). Can Amanda, which I have installed
now on the raq with the tape, use a 'client' or that Dell for a holding
disk or does it make more sense to have the amanda server on the
computer with the holding disk? Another option would be to buy a big
disk for the old Dell and a scsi card for it so I can plug the tape
machine into it. But that is asking for a bit more money.
I did a quick seach of the archives about whether Amanda does
differential backups and didn't find much. Is it just incremental/full?
I ask because in my limited knowledge it seems differential would be a
bit easier/safer to manage with low volume data stores.
I've found a couple excellant reference sites so hopefully they will
answer most config questions.
Thanks for any advice, I appreciate it.
--
Jim D.