[lug] Backup system ideas

Dean Brissinger brissing at kaidok.com
Fri May 20 21:31:33 MDT 2005


> From: billjorg at qwest.net [mailto:billjorg at qwest.net]
> I am aware of some very "sucessful" backup environments that use Amanda
> with HP DAT tape decks. The amount of data and rotation of the tapes would
> drive the type of hardware architecture. Unfortunately I have not used
> Amanda personally, but I have had to support shops that do. It seems to
> take very good care of their needs.

Amanda has limited environments it works well in.  First, you must have a
backup server where all machines are dumped locally to (holding space).
Then Amanda will write off to tape from the local host very efficiently.
The biggest drawbacks to Amanda are large file-system restores are not
reliable--you might wind up dissecting things with 'dd' to save what you
can.  Second Amanda cannot split tapes.  If a single dump-set won't fit on a
single tape and you cannot get a bigger tape the game is over.

Also, GNU tar support in Amanda is fairly new.  I have no seen across the
board success with it.  As a wrapper for dump and small filesystems (like
system disks 80G or less) it's a great little tool.





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