Pre-Installation

Pre-Installation Requirements 

This page describes the environmental requirements you should verify before running the install program. The Amanda Enterprise 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, which also called the Amanda Server or backup server.  

• 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 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.  
•  

Amanda Enterprise Server Requirements  

Backup server performs various CPU, Memory, Network, and Disk intensive operations. While hardware requirements will vary based on your backup environment, we recommend a server 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 Amanda Enterprise software is being installed.  
• The Amanda server and clients must have the latest service packs or updates to the distribution installed.  
• Amanda 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.  
• The Amanda server must have the locale set to en_* (for example, en_US.UTF-8), C, or POSIX.  
• 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 Amanda Enterprise 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.  In case of Ubuntu/Debian/RHEL 6/Oracle Enterprise Linux 6 platforms, the amandabackup user must be manually added to tape user group also. 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 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.  Please note mt-st package is not required for Suse/SLES distribution. 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 for Linux backup server and client  

GNU tar (version 1.15.1 or greater, except Red Hat/CentOS/Oracle Enterprise Linux, which supports version 1.14 or greater)  

• xinetd  
• ssh server  
• perl version 5.10.1  
• samba & samba-client  
• Schily tar (star 1.5final) - Required only if file system extended attributes have to be backed up.  
• Gnu GPG - if data encryption is being performed  

These additional programs are required on the Linux backup server  

·                       ssh client  

·                       gnuplot  

·                       gettext  

·                       mailx  

·                       redhat-lsb (for Redhat Enterprise/Cent OS/Oracle Enterprise Linux)  

·                       lsb-release (for Debian/Ubuntu)  

·                       mt-st, mtx and lsscsi commands for tape backups.  

Library Dependencies: The server packages are 32bit, so 32bit libraries are required. Native 32bit systems already have the required libraries. 64bit systems require the 32bit compatibility libraries. They are available for RHEL/CentOS/SLES/Oracle Enterprise/Fedora/Open Suse Linux platforms. On Ubuntu/Debian platforms, they may not be available for older platforms.   

These packages are installed by default on most Linux distributions. If you need to add them, you can use yum, apt-get, or yast. 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  

or  

#yast -i package_name  

In the case of yast on SLES, you can also use the YaST Online Update (YOU) to install new package and to keep the SLES distribution updated (which is recommended).  

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.  

Solaris 10/11 Client  

32-bit packages for dependencies are required for all Amanda Solaris server and clients.   

It is easier to install dependencies by using Solaris pkgutil tool available at the http://www.opencsw.org/get-it/pkgutil/ It automatically get all indirect dependencies. Use the following pkgutil command to install dependencies on Solaris server (you can install gnupg2 instead of gnupg):  

pkgutil -i gtar gnupg gawk libgcc_s1 mtx  

Use the following pkgutil command to install dependencies on Solaris Client (you can install gnupg2 instead of gnupg):  

pkgutil -i perl gtar gnupg libcurl4  

Mac OSX (Client only)  

Download and install the package dependencies available from the Zmanda Network download page when you select Mac OSX as the client platform.  

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 following VSS hotfix from Microsoft:  

Link to Microsoft Knowledgebase  

See the The Zmanda Windows Client User's Manual for further details on Windows client installation.  

Post installation changes on Linux/Mac OS X/Solaris 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.