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Diffstat (limited to 'misc/amanda/pkg/DESCR')
| -rw-r--r-- | misc/amanda/pkg/DESCR | 68 |
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diff --git a/misc/amanda/pkg/DESCR b/misc/amanda/pkg/DESCR new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..d22b3394fd2 --- /dev/null +++ b/misc/amanda/pkg/DESCR @@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ +WHAT IS AMANDA? +--------------- + +This is an alpha-test release of Amanda, the Advanced Maryland Automatic +Network Disk Archiver. Amanda is a backup system designed to archive many +computers on a network to a single large-capacity tape drive. This release +is currently in daily use at the University of Maryland at College Park +Computer Science Department, backing up all the disks on all the +workstations in the department: currently over 70 gigabytes of data across +more than 400 filesystems on more than 146 workstations and servers, using +a single 5 Gigabyte Exabyte EXB-8500. Here are some features of Amanda: + + * written in C, freely distributable. + * built on top of standard backup software: BSD Unix dump/restore, and + later GNU Tar and others. + * will back up multiple machines in parallel to a holding disk, blasting + finished dumps one by one to tape as fast as we can write files to + tape. For example, a ~2 Gb 8mm tape on a ~240K/s interface to a host + with a large holding disk can be filled by Amanda in under 4 hours. + * does simple tape management: will not overwrite the wrong tape. + * supports tape changers via a generic interface. Easily customizable to + any type of tape carousel, robot, or stacker that can be controlled via + the unix command line. + * supports Kerberos 4 security, including encrypted dumps. The Kerberos + support is available as a separate add-on package, see the file + KERBEROS.HOW-TO-GET on the ftp site, and the file docs/KERBEROS in this + package, for more details. + * for a restore, tells you what tapes you need, and finds the proper + backup image on the tape for you. + * recovers gracefully from errors, including down or hung machines. + * reports results, including all errors in detail, in email to operators. + * will dynamically adjust backup schedule to keep within constraints: no + more juggling by hand when adding disks and computers to network. + * includes a pre-run checker program, that conducts sanity checks on both + the tape server host and all the client hosts (in parallel), and will + send an e-mail report of any problems that could cause the backups to + fail. + * can compress dumps before sending over net, with either compress or gzip. + * can optionally syncronize with external backups, for those large + timesharing computers where you want to do fu-------------------------------------------- + +Amanda requires a host that is mostly idle at night, with a large capacity +tape drive (e.g. an EXABYTE or DAT tape). This becomes the "tape server +host". All the computers you are going to dump are the "backup client +hosts". The server host can also be a client host. + +Amanda works best with one or more large "holding disk" partition on the +server host available to it for buffering dumps before writing to tape. +The holding disk allows Amanda to run backups in parallel to the disk, only +writing them to tape when the backup is finished. Note that the holding +disk is not required: without it Amanda will run backups sequentially to +the tape drive. Running it this way kills the great performance, but still +allows you to take advantage of Amanda's other features. + +As a rule of thumb, for best performance the holding disk should be larger +than the dump output from your largest disk partitions. For example, if +you are backing up some full gigabyte disks that compress down to 500 MB, +then you'll want 500 MB on your holding disk. On the other hand, if those +gigabyte drives are partitioned into 500 MB filesystems, they'll probably +compress down to 250 MB and you'll only need that much on your holding +disk. Amanda will perform better with larger holding disks. We use 800 MB +for our holding disk. + +Actually, Amanda will still work if you have full dumps that are larger +than the holding disk: Amanda will send those dumps directly to tape one at +a time. If you have many such dumps you will be limited by the dump speed +of those machines. + |