There is development going on to allow AMANDA to write to any device as a backup medium. No need to get creative with the holding disk. You could then skip having to mount/unmount the drive, and really just change it like a tape, as long as the base OS doesn't freak out. I think it's in beta. (N.B. I'm still using AMANDA 2.4.2-19991216-beta1 because it was and is more solid than the commercial solution it replaced.)
Also, because the backup medium is of greater general use (read: easy to pawn once stolen), you might want to consider physical security of the medium when away from your site, and possibly encrypting the backups. > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 2:42 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: James Hanson > Subject: firewire/IDE drive idea > > > I'd like your opinion on an alternative to tape drives that would use > amanda to organize backups. > > Let's say that our amanda tape server would have a firewire connection > to an IDE drive. Since firewire is fast, and hot-pluggable, > one could > unmount the drive, disconnect the firewire, swap out the IDE drive > with another each day, plug it back in, reformat and mount it. > > Let's assume we have a stock of about forty 60 G IDE hard > drives. On a > 30 day cycle, we swap these drives, and at the beginning of the month, > put the most recent disk into cold storage for archive. > > Each night, the tape server goes out and dumps to tape, but > there being > no tape drive, sends the info instead to the holding disk, > our firewire > special. > > Looking at the costs, $100 for the firewire interface and > $4200 for the > hard drives gives you the complete system, assuming you have > a linux box > hanging around to mount it on. This compares favorably with > a AIT system, > which looks to be about $3000 for the drive and $100 per > tape, 15 tapes > needed for about a 2 week tapecycle. Advantages would be stability of > medium, speed of access, nonproprietary nature (which contributes to > redundancy, since any linux computer could mount the IDE drive). > Disadvantages - bulk/weight of disks, sensitivity to damage > from dropping, > slightly more complicated procedure to change 'tapes', others > I haven't > thought of yet... > > So what do you think? > - Feasible? > - Anyone already doing this? (is this a solved problem?) > - What about indexing? > - What have I overlooked? > > -- > John Rodkey, Information Technology, Westmont College > [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
