RE: suggestions for a backup scheme?
-Original Message- From: Eric Siegerman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 09, 2004 8:18 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: suggestions for a backup scheme? On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 09:37:23AM -0500, Greg Troxel wrote: Then, have a cron job that copies in either amanda.conf.full or amanda.conf.incr to amanda.conf before the dump runs. Our approach is to have multiple Amanda configurations, with the same disklist (using symlinks). The crontab entry runs a script that in turn runs amdump with the appropriate configuration argument. Why so complicated? You can set the path to the disklist in your amanda.conf. You don't need to set symlinks in each config-path. Set the disklist to a path who ist not your config-path (e.g. /etc/amanda/disklist for the disklist and /etc/amanda/DailySet1 for the config) and be happy. Great weekend Bernd
Re: suggestions for a backup scheme?
On Fri, Jan 23, 2004 at 09:37:23AM -0500, Greg Troxel wrote: Then, have a cron job that copies in either amanda.conf.full or amanda.conf.incr to amanda.conf before the dump runs. Our approach is to have multiple Amanda configurations, with the same disklist (using symlinks). The crontab entry runs a script that in turn runs amdump with the appropriate configuration argument. With this (to answer Jon's query), you meet your imposed requirements, and you still get multi-machine backups, holding disk, concurrency, and the ability to find backups. Making amanda do what you want is vastly easier than writing your own scripts from scratch. Agreed. There's a lot more to Amanda than just its scheduling policy, and it does not seem to me to be prima facie ridiculous to want to use it with a different policy, and to be frustrated at how hard that can be. -- | | /\ |-_|/ Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.[EMAIL PROTECTED] | | / It must be said that they would have sounded better if the singer wouldn't throw his fellow band members to the ground and toss the drum kit around during songs. - Patrick Lenneau
Re: suggestions for a backup scheme?
As others have noted, this is forcing amanda to do things she doesn't want to do. But still there are lots of benefits. I'd solve this by having two amanda.conf files. Almost the same, but one set up to only do full backups (skip-incr IIRC) and one set up to do only incrementals. Then, I'd have a label regexp that admits both SITE-FULL_000 and SITE-INCR_000 (yes, use more digits than you think you need, so when you get new tapes you can go from 000 to 009 to 010 to 019. I'm now at 050 myself, in groups of 10.) Then, have a cron job that copies in either amanda.conf.full or amanda.conf.incr to amanda.conf before the dump runs. Perhaps you can have tape labels different in each config too, so amcheck will complain if you have the tapes backwards, but I'm not sure. Arguably amanda should only check labels at amcheck/amdump/amlabel and not flip out if stored tape labels don't match (e.g. from amadmin site find). From: Jon LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] What are you looking for amanda to do for you that you could not do with cron entries and shell scripts? With this (to answer Jon's query), you meet your imposed requirements, and you still get multi-machine backups, holding disk, concurrency, and the ability to find backups. Making amanda do what you want is vastly easier than writing your own scripts from scratch. While I like the amanda way (I let it schedule, since my reqirements are 'get data back if I have to' and all else flows from that), it actually would be nice if amanda supported more complex polices. Someday I really need to find the CST to hook guile into amanda so people can write their own 'planner' modules that meet arbirary policies. You may want to change the bump params to avoid level 2/3 backups, which will tend to happen later in the week with the scheme you have outlined, if you don't want that to happen. But it's a fine thing to actually happen, except that in your case your tapes are going to be empty on incremental runs and you might as well stick to level 1s. The real downside to this scheme is of course that you need a tape bigger than the sum of all your (compressed) filesystems, but I realize you know that. But that's inherent in the requirements. A softer way to do this would be to set dumpcycle to 7 days, runspercycle to 5, and do a 'force' on everything before the 'full' runs. But amanda will promote some incrs to fulls on later dates to balance things in that case, and you'd lose the dual-labels. I haven't tried what I'm suggesting, but we do use dual configs. The noon config has no tape drive and a disklist containing only the notebooks. This dumps the notebooks to the holding disk so they get flushed at night (since they are often missing at night). The night config has a full disklist - amanda won't flush dumps not in the current disklist. -- Greg Troxel [EMAIL PROTECTED]
suggestions for a backup scheme?
First: thanks for all the people who answered my previous questions. Very much appreciated. I'm stuck (i.e. regardless of whether this makes sense, or no, sounds familiar?) with the following set of requirements: * 5 machines (it's good: 5 days/week, one overnight run/machine) * one full backup of all machines/month * four incremental backups/month, relative to above full dumps * two months sliding window, after which incremental backup tapes are reused * storage depth of one year So I'm going to use a tape/day, labeled DailyMachineWeekdayNumber, e.g. u03Monday01,u03Monday02, u03Monday03, u03Monday04. Is it possible to promote a full dump, say, Monday for u01, Tuesday for u02, etc., and store diffs relative to it? How do I do that? TIA, Eugen Leitl
Re: suggestions for a backup scheme?
On Thursday, 22.01.2004 at 16:19 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: So I'm going to use a tape/day, labeled DailyMachineWeekdayNumber, e.g. u03Monday01,u03Monday02, u03Monday03, u03Monday04. Is it possible to promote a full dump, say, Monday for u01, Tuesday for u02, etc., and store diffs relative to it? Without answering your other questions, can I say that using 'day of the week' names for your tapes is probably a bad idea. If you get out of sequence, it'll be confusing. We currently have day-of-the-week tapes, but in setting up a new rotation scheme on a new server shortly, the plan will NOT to do that. Dave. -- Dave Ewart [EMAIL PROTECTED] Computing Manager, Epidemiology Unit, Oxford Cancer Research UK PGP: CC70 1883 BD92 E665 B840 118B 6E94 2CFD 694D E370
Re: suggestions for a backup scheme?
Hi, Eugen, on Donnerstag, 22. Jänner 2004 at 16:19 you wrote to amanda-users: EL I'm stuck (i.e. regardless of whether this makes sense, or no, sounds familiar?) EL with the following set of requirements: EL * 5 machines (it's good: 5 days/week, one overnight run/machine) EL * one full backup of all machines/month EL * four incremental backups/month, relative to above full dumps EL * two months sliding window, after which incremental backup tapes are reused EL * storage depth of one year EL So I'm going to use a tape/day, labeled DailyMachineWeekdayNumber, EL e.g. u03Monday01,u03Monday02, u03Monday03, u03Monday04. Is it possible to promote EL a full dump, say, Monday for u01, Tuesday for u02, etc., and store diffs relative EL to it? EL How do I do that? Please don't do that. At least don't try to do that with AMANDA. AMANDA is NOT DESIGNED to do what you describe above. AMANDA is designed to schedule your backups in a way to successfully meet your goals. You don't say: Do a full backup of DLE host/disk on Monday. You say: I want at least one full backup of DLE host/disk in X days. You could FORCE AMANDA into doing it the old way but it is like tightening screws with a hammer. Not a good solution. -- This is a topic that appears very often on the list. You can browse the archives to find all the discussions ... It's definitely a FAQ. Also maybe consult: http://amanda.sourceforge.net/fom-serve/cache/28.html -- best regards, Stefan Stefan G. Weichinger mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: suggestions for a backup scheme?
On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 04:19:38PM +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: First: thanks for all the people who answered my previous questions. Very much appreciated. I'm stuck (i.e. regardless of whether this makes sense, or no, sounds familiar?) with the following set of requirements: * 5 machines (it's good: 5 days/week, one overnight run/machine) * one full backup of all machines/month * four incremental backups/month, relative to above full dumps * two months sliding window, after which incremental backup tapes are reused * storage depth of one year So I'm going to use a tape/day, labeled DailyMachineWeekdayNumber, e.g. u03Monday01,u03Monday02, u03Monday03, u03Monday04. Is it possible to promote a full dump, say, Monday for u01, Tuesday for u02, etc., and store diffs relative to it? How do I do that? With such a structured, non-amanda-like requirement, what benefits do you feel you would experience from using amanda? It will not be doing the scheduling, you will. It will not specify the tapes to be used, you will. It will track the backups (what is on what tape from what date), but you would know that already. What are you looking for amanda to do for you that you could not do with cron entries and shell scripts? -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Re: suggestions for a backup scheme?
Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: Please don't do that. In case I wasn't quite clear: This is not what I want to do. This is what I *have* to do. Again: I have to deal with people who want me to do insane things. On a daily basis. At least don't try to do that with AMANDA. The question is: can I force amanda to do it? AMANDA is NOT DESIGNED to do what you describe above. AMANDA is designed to schedule your backups in a way to successfully meet your goals. You don't say: Do a full backup of DLE host/disk on Monday. You say: I want at least one full backup of DLE host/disk in X days. You must be lucky. You're living in a rational universe. You could FORCE AMANDA into doing it the old way but it is like tightening screws with a hammer. Not a good solution. It doesn't matter. My days with the company are counted, largely because I'm getting tired of incompetent people telling me how to do my job. -- This is a topic that appears very often on the list. You can browse the archives to find all the discussions ... It's definitely a FAQ. Also maybe consult: http://amanda.sourceforge.net/fom-serve/cache/28.html
Re: suggestions for a backup scheme?
In cron, dependent on day of week/month amadmin force the level you want ? If you config the dumptype as always-1 or never-full, I don't recall cause I've never seen it used, can you override with a force command ? Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: Please don't do that. In case I wasn't quite clear: This is not what I want to do. This is what I *have* to do. Again: I have to deal with people who want me to do insane things. On a daily basis. At least don't try to do that with AMANDA. The question is: can I force amanda to do it? AMANDA is NOT DESIGNED to do what you describe above. AMANDA is designed to schedule your backups in a way to successfully meet your goals. You don't say: Do a full backup of DLE host/disk on Monday. You say: I want at least one full backup of DLE host/disk in X days. You must be lucky. You're living in a rational universe. You could FORCE AMANDA into doing it the old way but it is like tightening screws with a hammer. Not a good solution. It doesn't matter. My days with the company are counted, largely because I'm getting tired of incompetent people telling me how to do my job. -- This is a topic that appears very often on the list. You can browse the archives to find all the discussions ... It's definitely a FAQ. Also maybe consult: http://amanda.sourceforge.net/fom-serve/cache/28.html
Re: suggestions for a backup scheme?
Jon LaBadie wrote: With such a structured, non-amanda-like requirement, what benefits do you feel you would experience from using amanda? It will not be doing the scheduling, you will. It will not specify the tapes to be used, you will. It will track the backups (what is on what tape from what date), but you would know that already. What are you looking for amanda to do for you that you could not do with cron entries and shell scripts? I chose amanda, because I needed to do backups in a heterogenous *nix machine network. The other requirements are not of my own design. I would have been happy with whatever scheme Amanda would have suggested. The people I'm working for use Backup Exec, and a specific rigid schedule for their Windows machines. I'm not going to argue with them (it's not worth it, I'll rather quit). (Sorry for venting my frustration; I seem to have needed that).
