Re: Multiple storage-definitions, generating archive tapes

Am 23.08.22 um 23:16 schrieb Exuvo:
> I use two separate backup configurations. One for weekly backups and one 
> for yearly archival.
> The weekly i start from crontab and the archival one i start manually 
> with "sudo -u amanda amdump archive".
> Each configuration has its own storage definition with tape names 
> starting with R or A ( ^A[0-9]{5}$ ) respectively.
> They share holding disk but i always flush it so it is only used for 
> slow DLEs to avoid the drive starting and stopping a lot.
> 
> Is that what you are trying to do or did i read incorrectly?

This is what I *had* before.

What I try now is having both configs in one single amanda.conf.

So I use two storage definition blocks, two tape pools, etc ... all in 
one amanda.conf.

My goal is to avoid reading/compressing/encrypting the whole data twice 
every week or so.

In the specific case I want to avoid a ~26 hour amdump run filling 4 
tapes every weekend: it has to do ALL the dumping of ALL the DLEs again 
that already happened during the week sometimes. And even if I decide to 
let it do fresh FULLs on the weekend, I would prefer to all have it in 
ONE single configuration.

(some parts of) the archive tapes should be generated/prepared while 
doing the normal daily backups.

For 2 sites that looks good already: there I use physical and virtual 
tapes as the 2 storages. Amanda is able to write to both storages in 
parallel so I get tapes in both storages filled in every run (and the 
vtapes collect only the FULLs).

At one site it's more complicated because the 2 storages basically only 
point to separate (groups of) slots in one physical tape changer. So I 
can't write to both storages in parallel: only one tape drive.

So I try to come up with a schedule like:

* run the config with "-o storage=daily" every Mon-Fr do incrementals 
and fulls mixed to match the "daily" policy

* let that storage-config keep (some) fulls in the holding disks: they 
can be flushed by the storage-config "archive" on the weekend

* weekends: "-o storage=archive": let the config clean up the holding 
disk, plus let it do any missing fulls in the weekend runs (DLEs which 
are too big etc)

I am sure amanda is capable of doing that, and I get closer to getting 
it right with every run now.

The docs don't tell us much about the possibilities with that newer 
config syntax, to me it seems that all this had been added before the 
change of ownership and before development of the Community Edition stalled.

Back then Jean-Louis Martineau gave some tips on how to use that (in 
some ml-threads) but I never found some real documentation or examples.

OK, the sections and parameters are documented in the man-pages, but 
there is no HOWTO, afaik.