tape backup from remote

[Bob Martin]

Oddly, in the last 15 years or so, I've never had an issue with rdump 
and latency, even on the old 1.5m networks.
IIRC, amanda uses dump too.....

B

Christoph Sold wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Monday 29 March 2004 20:33, Sean Ellis wrote:
> 
>>Hello,
> 
> 
> G'day,
> 
> 
>>I have a very general question about backing up to tape from a remote
>>computer. The tape drive is unfamiliar territory for me, and I'm
>>looking for recommendations for a sequence of steps to take.
> 
> 
> Wise decision.
> 
> 
>>Both machines are running fbsd 4.*, the local machine is a recent 4.9
>>STABLE, and the tape drive is a Conner CTD800R-S. Will it be
>>possible, or advisable, to use a utility to back up over the net
>>directly to the tape, or should we be creating a local mirror and
>>backing up this?
> 
> 
> Backing up remotely can yield _very_ unsatisfying results for several 
> reasons:
> - - If there is not enough bandwith, the tape "trashes": After backing up 
> a few blocks, the tape has to stop, rewind, then re-synchronize and 
> append to the previously written data. This is _much_ slower than 
> nominal backup speed.
> - - If the network latency is too high, the backup software may get 
> confused and abort.
> - - If the connection is dropped during backup, may tools invalidate the 
> whole backup.
> 
> There are both commercial as well as open source tools dealing with this 
> situation. I used amanda (in the ports) to backup multiple remote 
> clients to one backup machine. Never experienced any data loss during 
> restore.
> 
> 
>>I know that these are very basic questions, but I felt that posting
>>here in isp might give me a more informed response. 
> 
> 
> Have a look at http://www.thestoragegroup.com/pubs.html , the links 
> there show many aspects of backup and recovery.
> 
> Another hint, though: DDS (DAT) is not up to the job. I personally 
> ditched all DDS devices after multiple data loss events being caused by 
> worn tapes, never properly written tapes, over-aged tapes. Never 
> happend with DLT, though.
> 
> HTH
> - -Christoph Sold
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (FreeBSD)
> 
> iD8DBQFAaIMHjGVuYEZ1RPYRAuy+AJ473q/Q5JXWodJu3aeO1y3pQVFT7wCfUkAr
> kOiW2k50MoiflSIxUO46+KE=
> =tPFi
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-isp at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-isp
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-isp-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"