Table of contents
Pre-Installation Requirements
This page describes the environmental requirements you should verify before running the install program for Zmanda Management Console and Amanda Enterprise Server. The ZMC and Amanda Enterprise server components required on each are described in Downloading and Installing Amanda Enterprise Components.
Throughout this document, The Amanda Client refers the system being backed up by the Amanda Enterprise Server using ZMC, which also called the Amanda Server or backup server and ZMC or UI Server respectively.
· Identify the hosts and filesystems to be protected using Amanda software. The list of hosts to be protected are the Amanda backup clients. The Amanda backup clients and the filesystems or directories to be backed up on each client will need to be specified during Amanda configuration.
· Identify the Amanda backup server. The Amanda backup server should have access to the media (tape, disk, changers) where the Amanda client backups will be stored on tapes or the backup process is managed (in case of NDMP). Any Amanda client can also act as an Amanda server, and it is recommended that every Amanda server also be a backup client. In selecting your ZMC and Amanda backup server machine, keep in mind that the server might use a significant amount of memory during backup runs, and that it must have good network connectivity to all Amanda clients.
ZMC and Amanda Enterprise Server Requirements
ZMC and Amanda Backup server performs various CPU, Memory, Network, and Disk intensive operations. While hardware requirements will vary based on your backup environment, we recommend a dedicated server or a virtual machine with at least 4GB of memory and a modern quad-core server-class CPU. The bandwidth of the network link between backup server and your network switch is also very critical. If network bonding is supported by your switch, we recommend providing a bonded connection to the backup server.
· You should have at least 2 GB of disk space on the disk where ZMC and Amanda Enterprise software is being installed.
· The ZMC, Amanda Backup server and clients must have the latest service packs or updates to the distribution installed.
· ZMC, Amanda Backup server and client cannot be installed on an NFS-mounted file systems. For example: You should not install the Amanda Enterprise ZMC (/opt/zmanda/amanda) on an NFS partition.
· In addition to the space required for the software itself, you should ensure that there is always 10% free space in the Zmanda installation and temporary directories, defined here. If ZMC or Amanda Enterprise server runs out of space on either of these directories while a backup is in progress, the backup will fail with MySQL errors. Also ZMC will print warnings messages when there is insufficient disk space.
· The amandabackup user should have privileges to have crontab entries to perform scheduled backups. In some distributions, the amandabackup user must be added to cron.allow file. This file is usually in /etc or /etc/cron.d directory.
· The amandabackup user should have permissions to read and write to disk and tape devices (if they are used for backup). The amandabackup user is automatically added to disk user group on Linux systems. It is important to restart ZMC and Backup server after adding amandabackup user to the tape user group.
· If you intend to back up an Oracle server, the amandabackup user must have permission to write to the $ORACLE_HOME directory.
· The amandabackup user should have permission to write to the /tmp directory on the Amanda Backup server.
· If a tape changer is the intended backup media, the backup server also requires both the mt-st and mtxpackage in addition to the platform-specific dependencies listed below. If a tape drive is the intended backup media, mt is required. Without the appropriate packages, ZMC will return an error message when you try to view these devices.
· The directories /etc/amanda and /etc/zmanda must be on the same file system.
· Amanda clients must have open inbound TCP ports 10080 and 10081.
· Internal firewalls and selinux policy must not prevent PHP processes from using HTTP over the loopback address 127.0.0.1
Package Dependencies
The following packages are required on the Amanda backup server and clients:
Linux
Program Dependencies: The following programs are needed A reasonably supported current x86_64 Linux system (Debian or RedHat based, currently) for Linux backup server and client
· Basic Utilities/Libraries
o Bash >= 4.2, Coreutils, Gawk,
o Glibc >= 2.17, zlib >= 1.2.2
o Libgcc >= 4.8, Libstdc++ >= 4.8
· System Utilities: [Systemd required]
o Logrotate, Cronie or Cronie-anacron or Cron with /usr/bin/crontab
o Systemd >= 219,
o Libselinux >= 2.3 (with SELinux not active)
· Required components
o GnuPG2,
o Libexpat >= 2.1
o Libmount >= 2.19
o GNUtar >= 1.23
· Important components (optional)
o Firewalld (preferred but configured w/tool)
o VMware Disklib >= 6.5,
o NFS mount functionality
o Mt-st (for tape operation - to be installed before the Backup Server)
o Smbclient (for CIFS disk access)
o Mailx or /bin/mail (for email notifications)
o BSDTar, Star (as needed)
These packages are installed by default on most Linux distributions. If you need to add them, you can use yum or apt-get. Packages can be obtained from the distribution media or from a distribution repository (run either as root):
#yum install package_name
or
#apt-get install package_name
Package Dependencies
The following packages are required on the Amanda clients:
Linux (Client only)
Download and install the client package available from the Zmanda Network download page when you select Linux as the client platform.
See the The Zmanda Linux Client User's Manual for further details on Windows client installation.
Windows (Server & Desktop) clients
The amandabackup user must exist, and be added to the Users, Backup Operators, and Administrators groups. Windows clients must open inbound TCP ports 10080 and 10081, and outbound TCP ports 800:840. Windows application backups (licensed as separate agents) require that the Volume Shadow Copy Service be enabled and started. To prevent excessive memory consumption on application backup clients, Zmanda also recommends that you install the VSS hotfix from Microsoft.
See the The Zmanda Windows Client User's Manual for further details on Windows client installation.
Post installation changes on Linux Amanda Clients
· This section is not applicable for Windows clients.
· Make sure there is a reverse name lookup record in the DNS for the Amanda server (FQDN if FQDN is used in the Amanda configuration files).
· The .amandahosts file for the amandabackup user (~amandabackup/.amandahosts) on the client must authorize the Amanda server to run a backup.
· The /etc/amanda/amanda-client.conf file must be edited on the client (if the client and server do not reside on the same machine). Specifically, the following entries must be edited:
index_server "localhost" # your amindexd server
tape_server "localhost" # your amidxtaped server
Change "localhost" to match to the hostname of the Amanda backup server.
· If secure communication is required for restoration, ssh must be used for restoration. ssh is also required when restoring to a MacOS X/Unix/Linux system that is not running the Zmanda Client software. To force the restore process to use ssh, edit /etc/xinetd.d/zmrecover on Linux systems to include the following line:
disable = yes
· On MacOSX systems, run the following command: launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.amanda.zmrecover.plist. To re-enable the standard client restore mechanism, enter: launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.amanda.zmrecover.plist.
Zmanda Management Console Browser Requirements
The following browsers have been tested and verified to work with the Zmanda Management Console:
· Latest version of Chrome
· Latest version of Firefox
· Recent versions of other browsers may also work
In all cases you must have JavaScript enabled. Note that if JavaScript is enabled during a session either in the browser itself or in a plug-in such as NoScript, you must log out of the ZMC and then log in again to avoid potential problems with the interface. If you are browsing over a slow connection such as dial-up, loading of the JavaScript files may time out after 15 seconds.