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 "AMANDA-%%%" any
 meta-autolabel "META-%%%"
 define changer removable-disk {
    tpchanger "chg-disk:/amanda/diskchanger"
    property "NUM-SLOT" "4"
    property "AUTO-CREATE-SLOT" "yes"
    property "REMOVABLE" "yes"
 }
 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.

Assigning meta label to already labelled volumes

If you already use removable hard disk, these disk don't have a meta label, you can easily assign a meta label to each label with the amlabel command

 amlabel <conf> <label> --meta <meta-label> --assign

You must assign the same meta label to all labels on the same removable hard disk.