Amanda success stories

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Amanda success stories

Successful Restore

Wanted to heap on the praise to the Amanda team for continuing to put out a great package.

Recently we were in the process of doing a webserver migration. Unfortunately some things did not go as planned and the need for an immediate restore arose. I was able to use Amanda/amrecover and get back the files needed without any problems. It wasn't a huge amount of data but vital data. We are using a very simple system here:

An old Redhat 9 server with a Sony TLS-9000 8-tape(dds3) changer attached. The clients are a mix of Linux and Sun machines. All are backed up using tar as the archiver. Server and clients running amanda-2.4.5

Used amrecover and restored to a filesystem local to the tapeserver. Then tarballed the needed files and dropped them in place on the webserver.

In my opinion Amanda beats any commercial packages I have used. Moreover, it also help me have additional knowledge that really looks good in my resume.

A Satisfied User

As being one of the first contributors to this wiki and a user of Amanda 2.4.4 as part of SuSE SLES 9 for more than 20 months now, I can only say: It works!

Some facts:

  • Backupserver is a PC
    • Pentium 4, 1700 MHz
    • 384 MB Memory
    • OS-filesystem on a software raid of two 160 GB drives
    • 1 x 500 GB holding disk
    • 1 x Adaptec AHA-2940/2940W to control the library mechanism
    • 1 x Adaptec AIC-7892B connected to two SDLT 600 drives.
    • 1 x Intel Corporation 82541PI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
  • Tape library with 20 slots QUALSTAR TLS-6220
    • 14 slots taken for rotating backup
      • dumpcycle 1 weeks
      • runspercycle 5
      • tapecycle 14 tapes
  • 2 tape drives QUANTUM SDLT600
  • Backup clients
    • 10 physical servers
    • 12 virtual servers
    • Daily avarage backup size: 220 GB

We did some partial restores in that time. That worked as expected. Thank god, we didn't need to make a full restore after a crash. But we're confident that we could do it. (Andreas Mock)


Amanda in a "smaller" Environment

Here are some Specs about the used Hardware:

  • Backupserver Dell Poweredge 2850 Dual Xeon
    • 4 GB Ram
    • 500 GB Internal Hardware Raid-0 (4x U320 SCSI) | Holding
    • 2 TB External U160 Raid-0 Storage | Holding
    • 1 PCI-E LSI Logic U320 Controller -> External SCSI Storage
    • 1 PCI-X LSI Logic U320 Controller -> Library
    • 1 Onboard DELL Perc 4i (LSI Chipset) U320 Controller -> Internal Harddisks
    • 1 Gbit Intel FC Ethernet
  • Quantum PX 506 Library
    • 100 Slots
    • 2 HP LTO-3 Drives (max. 6 Drives)
    • 95 slots taken for rotating backup
    • Dumpcycle 14 Days
    • Runs per Cycle 14
  • Clients
    • 280 Physical Machines
    • Mostly SuSE/Debian/CentOS Systems
    • Repacked RPM/Deb Packages which fit our needings
    • Daily Avg. size: about 1200-1500Gb


Every Backup run takes about 6-7 Hours. We don't use Software Compression as suggested in the Amanda Documentation, the LTO Drives take it much more better without getting to much load on the Server / Clients. The first runs where done with Client "calcsize" to get Amanda some Information to calculate the Backupsjobs which have been changed to Serverside Calculation after 1 Week.

After playing around some time to figure out the best Settings regarding Server Load and Performance we ended up in using 20 Simultaneous Backupjobs, each one using tar at Clientside. Transferrates are up to 900Mbit/Sec, Taping Speed up to 100Mb/sec, which ends up in a Load of max. 10-12 on the Backupserver.



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Restores are being done locally onto the Backupserver where our Clients can access their Data by SFTP/SCP. No Commercial Solution which has been in use by us can beat amandas Performance for getting the Backups, Restores and which is the most important thing: There's no need to Check the Backupruns every Day, fixing Client/Server Problems every Day. It just does what a backup has to do, get the Data as fast as possible and don't make trouble every day. Understatement ;) Only Usability & Reporting could be a little bit more intuitive to inexperienced Users.

But ok, enough praise for today, where can I get my cookie?


We used Bacula before, but it wont fit our needs (the SQL Backend is too bad for such sizes). The only thing I can say about amanda... rock on :)