Hi Ross:

The 4TB will be the initial phase of our go live period. We envision
going to 15-20TB during the first two years. yes, this will be the
backup system for our cluster and all other servers. We are looking at
tape hardware solutions from multiple manufacturers (24-50 tape libraries)
but have time to lock the *right* one.

Right now I am trying to collect as many "pro/con" as I am able to before
we have to say "Veritas".

RV

/////////////////////////////////////
Ronald Vincent Vazquez
(301) 540-9394 Home
(240) 401-9192 Cell

Thu, May 11, 2006 at 12:27:31PM -0400, Ronald Vincent Vazquez wrote:
Is anyone out there using Amanda to back up this much data with any tape
library that would be willing to share their experiences?

Are you talking about a single host that needs 4TB backed up, or do
you mean a bunch of hosts that add up to 4TB?

I don't have a system large enough to test a 4TB disk backup. Hope
you have big tapes! :-)

If you mean the second, my Amanda setup does almost 16TB, split across
four servers. I recently lost backups due to no fault of Amanda. Had
an issue with the HBA for our EMC SAN.

Amanda is great!

Hello again:

Well, it looks like we are going to be getting a Dell PowerVault-124T to
get started due to $$. Is anyone on this list using the PowerVault-124T
(or any of the Dell PowerVault drives) with Amanda? Do you like this
unit?

Thanks,

/////////////////////////////////////
Ronald Vincent Vazquez
http://www.ctcministries.org/
(301) 540-9394 Home
(240) 401-9192 Cell

Hi Ross:

The 4TB will be the initial phase of our go live period. We envision
going to 15-20TB during the first two years. yes, this will be the
backup system for our cluster and all other servers. We are looking at
tape hardware solutions from multiple manufacturers (24-50 tape libraries)
but have time to lock the *right* one.

Right now I am trying to collect as many "pro/con" as I am able to before
we have to say "Veritas".

RV

/////////////////////////////////////
Ronald Vincent Vazquez
(301) 540-9394 Home
(240) 401-9192 Cell

Thu, May 11, 2006 at 12:27:31PM -0400, Ronald Vincent Vazquez wrote:
Is anyone out there using Amanda to back up this much data with any tape
library that would be willing to share their experiences?

Are you talking about a single host that needs 4TB backed up, or do
you mean a bunch of hosts that add up to 4TB?

I don't have a system large enough to test a 4TB disk backup. Hope
you have big tapes! :-)

If you mean the second, my Amanda setup does almost 16TB, split across
four servers. I recently lost backups due to no fault of Amanda. Had
an issue with the HBA for our EMC SAN.

Amanda is great!

Ronald,

Search on amanda-users archive. There were couple of recent threads on
using Dell PowerVault with Amanda.

]
Thanks,
Paddy

5/12/06, Ronald Vincent Vazquez <rvazquez (AT) ctcministries (DOT) orgwrote:
Hello again:

Well, it looks like we are going to be getting a Dell PowerVault-124T to
get started due to $$. Is anyone on this list using the PowerVault-124T
(or any of the Dell PowerVault drives) with Amanda? Do you like this
unit?

Thanks,

/////////////////////////////////////
Ronald Vincent Vazquez
http://www.ctcministries.org/
(301) 540-9394 Home
(240) 401-9192 Cell

Hi Ross:

The 4TB will be the initial phase of our go live period. We envision
going to 15-20TB during the first two years. yes, this will be the
backup system for our cluster and all other servers. We are looking at
tape hardware solutions from multiple manufacturers (24-50 tape libraries)
but have time to lock the *right* one.

Right now I am trying to collect as many "pro/con" as I am able to before
we have to say "Veritas".

RV

/////////////////////////////////////
Ronald Vincent Vazquez
(301) 540-9394 Home
(240) 401-9192 Cell

Thu, May 11, 2006 at 12:27:31PM -0400, Ronald Vincent Vazquez wrote:
Is anyone out there using Amanda to back up this much data with any tape
library that would be willing to share their experiences?

Are you talking about a single host that needs 4TB backed up, or do
you mean a bunch of hosts that add up to 4TB?

I don't have a system large enough to test a 4TB disk backup. Hope
you have big tapes! :-)

If you mean the second, my Amanda setup does almost 16TB, split across
four servers. I recently lost backups due to no fault of Amanda. Had
an issue with the HBA for our EMC SAN.

Amanda is great!

Hi Ronald,
We have a Dell Powervault 110T using 1 TB tapes and Amanda is working
lovely with it. (except for some hiccups with ssh auth) Depending on
how your data is distributed, you are going to want to change your size
estimation method.

Tue, May 16, 2006 at 09:53:13AM -0500, Gordon J. Mills III wrote:
here are some of my comments about TSM

Thanks Gordon. Tivoli sounds like an interesting enterprise system.

"incremental forever" is a feature I've heard of in some other
backup systems. I wouldn't expect that to fit the mold of amanda
as recovery would then truly demand amanda software and indexes
to be present.

feature you describe I would like to see added to amanda.
It really is not a change to the operation, but a new utility.
That is copying all or portions of a set of backups to new
"tapes" or a new config. With many people doing amanda backups
to vtapes, it would be nice to be able to archive desired
parts to "offsite" ptapes.

Tue, May 16, 2006 at 11:17:34AM -0400, Jon LaBadie wrote:
Tue, May 16, 2006 at 09:53:13AM -0500, Gordon J. Mills III wrote:
here are some of my comments about TSM

"incremental forever" is a feature I've heard of in some other
backup systems. I wouldn't expect that to fit the mold of amanda
as recovery would then truly demand amanda software and indexes
to be present.

I've been thinking about a new vtape changer that might make it easy
to do this kind of incremental forever backup.

issue that I run into: Most of my system have 18-20 virtual tapes.
runtapes is 2, but I really try hard to keep things at one tape. We
need to kep to weeks of backups.

Suppose some event happens and someone needs to make an emergency
backup of what's on a server, right now. They run amdump, it clears
the oldest tape. If this happens too many times in a dumpcycle, oops,
we don't have our two weeks of backups.

I've been thinking about a tape changer that uses a timestamp for the
label. No tape is ever reused. When amdump runs, something creates a
new tape, labels it, and loads it. The backup is done to this tape.

You then have a cronjob that runs nightly to cull old backups. Give
it a timeframe, it deletes any tapes that are older than the
timeframe.

If you had a model like this, where tapes could stick around forever
if nothing deleted them, you'd just need a flag that a given timestamp
is a full backup and should never be thrown out.

With many people doing amanda backups
to vtapes, it would be nice to be able to archive desired
parts to "offsite" ptapes.

Shouldn't this be easy if you plan to make your vtapes the same size
as your ptapes?

Tue, May 16, 2006 at 11:58:55AM -0400, Ross Vandegrift wrote:
Tue, May 16, 2006 at 11:17:34AM -0400, Jon LaBadie wrote:
Tue, May 16, 2006 at 09:53:13AM -0500, Gordon J. Mills III wrote:
here are some of my comments about TSM

"incremental forever" is a feature I've heard of in some other
backup systems. I wouldn't expect that to fit the mold of amanda
as recovery would then truly demand amanda software and indexes
to be present.

I've been thinking about a new vtape changer that might make it easy
to do this kind of incremental forever backup.

issue that I run into: Most of my system have 18-20 virtual tapes.
runtapes is 2, but I really try hard to keep things at one tape. We
need to kep to weeks of backups.

Suppose some event happens and someone needs to make an emergency
backup of what's on a server, right now. They run amdump, it clears
the oldest tape. If this happens too many times in a dumpcycle, oops,
we don't have our two weeks of backups.

I've been thinking about a tape changer that uses a timestamp for the
label. No tape is ever reused. When amdump runs, something creates a
new tape, labels it, and loads it. The backup is done to this tape.

Couldn't this be done now with the autolabel feature and a V.large
tapecycle that always called for a new tape?

You then have a cronjob that runs nightly to cull old backups. Give
it a timeframe, it deletes any tapes that are older than the
timeframe.

If you had a model like this, where tapes could stick around forever
if nothing deleted them, you'd just need a flag that a given timestamp
is a full backup and should never be thrown out.

With many people doing amanda backups
to vtapes, it would be nice to be able to archive desired
parts to "offsite" ptapes.

Shouldn't this be easy if you plan to make your vtapes the same size
as your ptapes?

The logs+indexes might be a problem if it was going to a different config.
And I was thinking of maybe selecting what I wanted, like all level 0's of
a particular host:disk. as of a specific date, one level 0 plus
incrementals up to that date.

Tue, May 16, 2006 at 12:31:57PM -0400, Jon LaBadie wrote:
Tue, May 16, 2006 at 11:58:55AM -0400, Ross Vandegrift wrote:
I've been thinking about a tape changer that uses a timestamp for the
label. No tape is ever reused. When amdump runs, something creates a
new tape, labels it, and loads it. The backup is done to this tape.

Couldn't this be done now with the autolabel feature and a V.large
tapecycle that always called for a new tape?

! That's exciting, I didn't know that there was such a think as
autolabel. Ironically, the first google link when searching for
"amanda autolabel" is about TSM. I checked the stuff on
www.amanda.org but I didn't find that option. Could I get some more
info?

Shouldn't this be easy if you plan to make your vtapes the same size
as your ptapes?

The logs+indexes might be a problem if it was going to a different config.
And I was thinking of maybe selecting what I wanted, like all level 0's of
a particular host:disk. as of a specific date, one level 0 plus
incrementals up to that date.

that would be a cool tool. It would solve a lot of problems for
smaller installations too. Say I want to backup my workstation and
have the files accessible most of the time for easy restore. However,
I do want occasional archival copies to tape/DVD/whatever.