[K12OSN] RE: Linux Tape Backup Software

[Les Mikesell]

On Mon, 2004-03-01 at 11:02, Chris Kacoroski wrote:

> 2. It was able to back up Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux (and maybe Windows, 
> although they are having problems getting the restore permissions 
> correct)
> 

Amanda will do those too - Windows is limited to a "client's eye" view
so you can't restore to bare metal or maintain ACL's, though.

> 3. It used a familiar (to by boss) backup strategy of Fulls on weekends 
> and incrementals during the week (Amanda and TiBS spread the Fulls 
> throughout the week)
> 

I can't help educate your boss, but if your limiting factor is the
size of your tape drive/changer then amanda's way of making the
targets estimate the run sizes and computing the best fit every
night makes a lot of sense.  Otherwise you end up with someone having
to come in to swap tapes on the weekend.

> 4. It has a virtual tape library option that allows us to meet some 
> customer requirements that we keep so much data on disk.

If you don't run all the fulls at once, you don't need such a big
changer...  Amanda's biggest problem is that it doesn't know how to
split a single target across tapes.  Normally you would do whole
filesystems in a run, and amanda can spread different runs onto
different tapes easily enough.  However if you have any filesystems
where the fulls don't fit on a single tape you have to fiddle with
making directory-based runs that will fit and be careful not to
miss any new directories that might be added later.  Other than
that, it takes care of itself.

---
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com