Amanda 2.5 Released

Anonymous Coward writes to tell us that a new release of the popular open source backup tool Amanda is now available fixing many of the limitations of previous versions. From the release: "Overall the focus of the release is on security of the backup process & backed up data, scalability of the backup process and ease of installation & configuration of Amanda."

Comments

What a co-incidence!

[QuantumG]

In high school, Amanda was always my backup too!

Ahh, fun times.

Re:What a co-incidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not nice to call your sister your backup.

Re:What a co-incidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

In high school, Amanda was always my backup too!

Was Amanda's last name Hugankiss?

Works great with older setups & configs

[Almost-Retired]

I've been running it for 4 nights now, replaceing the previous 2.4.5 version I've been running for quite some time, and its working just like the 2.4.5 version it replaced. So if you are worried about the upgrade breaking something, if it worked with your old configs, it should Just Work(TM) with the new version too. I used the same config/build script I've been useing for years to build and install it.

Newbies, please goto amanda.org or zmanda.org and read the top ten FAQ there, it will save you many headaches in getting it setup. To make it work, and work well, may require a re-thinking of how you think a backup should be done. Once setup its a background process you get nightly emails from, but requires little or no hand-holding on a daily basis other than making sure the tape needed is in the drive for tonights run. vtape users (where the tape images are kept on a humongous hard drive) don't even have to deal with that, the best of both worlds IMO. I've been doing that for about 18 months or more here at the coyote.den, my private domains name.

And I highly recommend subscribing to the amanda-user mailing list, details on amanda.org, where you can ask for help and get it from more knowledgable people than I, although you will find me there too. 10 messages is a busy day so it won't eat your lunch.

--
Cheers, Gene

BackupPC is also good

[HappyCamp]

Nothing against Amanda, but I switched from using Amanda to going to BackupPC. http://backuppc.sf.net/

What I really like about BackupPC is the Disk based backup focus of it. It does NOT support tape drives. But for doing backups to hard drives it is great. And with the way it will only keep one copy of a file, no matter how many systems it is on really helps to minimize disk space usage. Example: You have /bin/ls on five of your linux boxes that all run the same distribution. It will only store one copy of /bin/ls on the backup server and use hardlinks to keep track of all the other copies. Plus it compresses the files.

Great stuff!

Yes! Tape Spanning!

[Noksagt]

Yes, it supports tape spanning. It also supports compression and encryption of your choice (so you should be able to use star instead of gtar & bzip2 rather than gzip). These are the most frequently requested features, so this is really a good release!

Re:thanks amanda

[iamdrscience]

i've been using amanda at work for the past year now and it's been wonderful.

Sure it seems wonderful now, but work relationships can cause a lot of trouble. I mean, sooner or later she's going to realize you're just using her and then what?

How does it compare to Bacula?

[leereyno]

How does this new version compare to Bacula (http://www.bacula.org/)?

The thing I like about Bacula is that it will allow you to spread a backup job accross multiple tapes, supports backups to disk, has its own scheduling system, and has a native windows client. From what I understand Amanda uses tar and relies upon NFS, SMB, or other network filesystem protocols to work. Bacula on the other hand has a true client/server architecture with a native client running on all of the systems it supports. It also makes use of MySQL to keep track of backup jobs. This made it very easy for me to create a web interface for it (http://raobackup.eas.asu.edu/

If Amanda has been improved to be competitive with Bacula in some of these areas then I'll definitely have to investigate it.

Lee

Re:How does it compare to Bacula?

[Noksagt]

This version of amanda supports tape spanning. Many used to say use amanda for the scheduler or bacula for the tape spanning. Since amanda spans, this no longer holds.

Amanda has always allowed backups to a holding disk & the scheduler has been fantasitc. There isn't a native windows client, but the windows client runs fine under cygwin, or one can backup SMB shares.

Amanda does rely on tar (which is, IMHO, a good thing), but that tar can be different on each client (so that one can backup resource forks on OS X, for example).

Amanda doesn't rely on NFS or SMB, but can use them. There are excellent web interfaces through, for example, webmin.

I Tried It Once...

[Illbay]

...but had a tough time with the (at least at that time) limited hardware support. While I'm sure they've probably worked that out (at least to a better degree than before), my search for alternatives back then turned up rdiff-backup.

Not only has it always been versatile as far as the hardware it uses--for my SOHO server, an external USB Harddrive is the ticket, one that I can just snatch and carry with me if natural disaster threatens, e.g.--but the METHOD of backup is superior to anything I've personally ever encountered.

Backup AND restore are both a breeze.

I'm sure that AMANDA is more appropriate for many (read "more servers") usage, but I've found rdiff-backup to be perfect for someone like me, with only a single server to worry about (althought that single server contains all my family's business and personal files--so to us, it's not such a trivial thing).

solid piece of software

[2old2rock]

A good piece of software thats getting some attention it deserves. Looking at http://amanda.zmanda.com/amanda-25-released.html and the wiki at http://wiki.amanda.com/ it feel like amanda is getting the recognition it deserves. For newbies I would recommed http://forums.zmanda.com/ and the wiki above.

Bacula doesn't have Amanda's scheduling.

[argent]

For me, the lack of automatic backup scheduling in other packages is a complete deal-breaker. Amanda, I just tell it how many full backups I want over what period, and it makes it happen. There's no "full backup this friday" crap. You don't have enough tape? It defers the backups it can, and lets you know you need to get more... it's painless.

For a site with growing storage there's no alternative to Amanda.

Nice but..

[daniel_newton]

I these backup programs seem to complicated for me. At work we just use tar for our archival backup (I can have a bare metal restore from tape of our main production server up in about 2 hours).

Also we use rsnapshot for hourly/daily/weekly/monthly snapshots of the whole filesystem (rsnapshot is very cool and simple too).

Re:Nice but..

[dj44]

If you have more than 2 or 3 machines that you want to backup to disk and especially tape you need Amanda for automation. After initial setup Amanda doesn't require any babysitting, it just works for you. ---- dj

What's next for amanda?

[Noksagt]

From the amanda hacker's list:

We need to decide on the release version? 2.6? 2.5.1?

Following is the list of features that have been requested:

- Support for POSIX file names (allowing spaces in filenames)
- Amanda user ids consistency (sourceforge bug 1416737) - Requested by
Paul Bijnens, Mitch Collinsworth
- Backing up filesystem ACLs (schily tar support)
- Design and implementation of application API (new Dumper API)
    (Proposal in http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Application_API )
- Cleaning up the device interface to support WORM devices
    (Suggested by mhelmling http://forums.zmanda.com/showthread.php?t=28 )

Of course, all open bugs in sourceforge.net bug tracker have to be addressed.

If you have feature requests or if you find bugs, please post them in
sourceforge.net bug tracker
(http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=120&atid =100120)

Thanks,
Paddy

Not just high-school backup...

[Dystopian Rebel]

~~~ A SLASHDOT VIGNETTE ~~~

[telephone rings]

Slashdotter: Hello? Oh hi Mom. How's my laundry coming along?

Mother: It's almost done, dearie. I can't seem to get the stain out of your Starfleet Command t-shirt, though.

Slashdotter: [frustrated] Aww!

Mother: Don't worry, I'll keep trying. [pause] Dear, are you seeing anyone? I'm worried about you.

Slashdotter: Aw come on, mom. Well, um, yeah... sure I'm seeing someone.

Mother: You're not fibbing again, are you?

Slashdotter: What? No!

Mother: If you aren't fibbing, tell me what her name is.

Slashdotter: Uh...her name is... Amanda.

Mother: Really?

Slashdotter: Yeah, Amanda. I'm serious. Amanda is really cool.

Mother: You have a GIRLFRIEND? REALLY? I'm so thrilled! Your father will be so thrilled!

Slashdotter: Yes... Amanda. In fact, she's someone at the office. We really "click".

Mother: Oh! I am ~so~ glad. You do have to be careful with an office relationship, dearie. I hope you are being discrete.

Slashdotter: Don't worry, mom. We keep it very professional when we see each other at work.

Mother: I'm glad! Amanda... that is a nice name. Is she pretty?

Slashdotter: Oh yes, yes she is. Pretty in an intuitive sort of way. And totally low maintenance.

Mother: She sounds wonderful!

Slashdotter: Yeah... um... Yeah, and mom? Amanda would really like to see my Starfleet Command t-shirt this weekend...

Mother: I'll take care of it right away, dear! Your father will be so thrilled!