Re: Is there a write-up on using amvault with an archive config?

Thanks Winston, this moves me a bit closer.

A couple of inline questions:

On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 12:34:16AM -0400, Winston Sorfleet wrote:
>I use amvault to tertiarary media (LTO-2, I am just a casual home user)
>while my main archive is VTL on a slow NAS.  I use cron, but obviously I
>could just run as-needed from the command line.

My archive will be on its own disk.  I planned to keep it in the server
along with the regular backups, but moving it to a different computer
could further reduce some failure modes.

>You're right, it is a bit hard to intuit, and I had to get some help
>from the community here as it is using overrides.
>
>The command line I use is as follows:
>
>/usr/sbin/amvault -q --latest-fulls --dest-storage "tape_storage" vtl
>
>Where vtl is the config.  The key part is the "tape_storage" which
>refers to the appropriate vault-storage template in the amanda conf
>file.  E.g.

So "vtl" is the config name of the archive, correct?
Would that config name be used in restore/recovery commands as well?

Just doing "latest-fulls" would not be appropriate for my use case.
For some pretty static DLEs I only do fulls about every 6 weeks.
An example is my almost never changing collection of online music.
No need for amvault to archive many copies of that.  I likely would
use a date specification ("--src-timestamps ...) and "--fulls-only".

I see that specific DLE can be specified at the end of the amvault
command line.  From the manpage it shows:

    [hostname [ disk [ date [ level ...

However I could have multiple amanda configs with the same hostname and 
disk combination, say a DailySet and a WeeklySet.  Where would you
specify the amanda config you wish to archive (or "vault" if you wish).

The manpage says "latest" can be used as an alternative to a date
specification.  The wording is "then the most recent amdump or amflush
run will be used."  Do you know if that is literally accurate?  If I
use both "--fulls-only" and "latest" plus list a specific DLE, will
nothing be archived if the level 0 was in the 2nd most recent dump?
Or might it locate the latest level 0 of that DLE?



>storage "vtl"
>vault-storage "tape_storage"
>
>define storage "tape_storage" {
>     erase-on-failure yes
>     policy "HP_Robot"
>     runtapes 1
>     set-no-reuse no
>     tapedev "LTO-2"
>     tapetype "LTO2"
>     tapepool "$r"
>     tpchanger "LTO-2"
>     labelstr "Vault-[1-7]"
>     autolabel "Vault-%" any
>}

For this requirement, I love the idea of autolabeling.
Will be another first for me.

>define changer LTO-2 {
>     tpchanger "chg-single:/dev/nst0"
>     device-property "LEOM" "TRUE"
>}
>
>define tapetype LTO2 {
>    comment "HP Ultrium 448, hardware compression off"
>    length 193024 mbytes
>    filemark 0 kbytes
>    speed 20355 kps
>}
>
>Obviously for you it will be simpler since you don't have to engage the
>SCSI subsystem and define actual tapetype parameters or fiddle with
>blocksizes.  And you're not limited to a single "tape".

I think I'll be looking to "spin down" the archive disk.
It would be used so seldom.

Thanks again.
Jon

>
>On 2022-03-21 15:46, Jon LaBadie wrote:
>> *** Apologies if a near duplicate has been posted ***
>> *** I initially submitted it with the wrong email ***
>>
>>
>> Amazing, I've used amanda for about 25 years and never set up
>> an archive config nor used amvault.  No time like the present
>> as I setup a new server with increased capacity.
>>
>> I don't want an archive config that does periodic massive
>> dumps.  Instead I'd prefer that on-demand I could copy a
>> level 0 DLE to the archive in such a way that amrecover/
>> amrestore could use the archive config.  Both the source
>> and the archive destination would be vtapes but on
>> different drives in different housings.
>>
>> I "think" that amvault would be the appropriate tool.
>> If not, correct my error please.
>>
>> Has anyone done a write-up on setting up and using such
>> a scheme?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Jon
>>
>>> End of included message <<<

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                 [email protected]
  154 Milkweed Dr                 (540) 868-8052 (H)
  Lake Frederick, VA 22630        (703) 935-6720 (M)