How To:Using removable hard disk changers as Virtual tapes

This feature is available from Amanda 3.3

Amanda can backup to Removable hard disk changers by treating it as virtual tapes. The user has to load and unload hard disks. amanda.conf configuration for removable hard disk changers.

 autolabel "$m-%%%" any
 meta-autolabel "$c-%%%"
 define changer removable-disk {
    tpchanger "chg-disk:/amanda/diskchanger"
    property "NUM-SLOT" "4"
    property "AUTO-CREATE-SLOT" "yes"
    property "REMOVABLE" "yes"
    property "MOUNT" "yes"
    property "UMOUNT" "yes"
    property "UMOUNT-LOCKFILE" "/etc/amanda/CONF/disk.lock"
    property "UMOUNT-DELAY" "1"
 }
 tpchanger "removable-disk"

• Four slots (NUM-SLOT) is automatically created (AUTO-CREATE-SLOT) on each mounted disk.
• Each slot (autolabel) is labelled with a distinct label.
• The REMOVABLE property check that something is mounted.
• Each hard disk get a meta label. In the future, amanda will be able to ask to mount the disk with the meta label when it require a specific label.
• Mount (MOUNT) the disk if it is not already mounted, the system must be configured to allow the amanda user to do it.
• Umount (UMOUNT) the disk when the program exit.
• Amanda needs a lock file (UMOUNT-LOCKFILE) to do safe umount.
• Umount the disk after (UMOUNT-DELAY) second when the disk is not in use. A value of '0' leads to unnecessary umount/mount.