Sample Amanda configuration using RAIT to mirror and a virtual tape drive

RAIT with only two drives, creates a perfect copy of the data: a mirror of your backup.Each of these mirrors is be
handled by its own output driver: one of the mirrors can write to a real tape device, and the other mirror can write
a virtual tape (vtape) using the "file" driver. The vtapes can be used for fast recovery, and the tapes can be stored offsite.

Together with the "chg-multi" changer, which is suitable for a whole range of applications, this setup requires these parameters in amanda.conf (the parameters dumpcycle, runspercycle and tapecycle should be adapted to your environment):

org "zmanda"             # your organization name for reports
mailto "root@localhost"          # space separated list of operators at your site
dumpcycle 1 week               # the number of days in the normal dump cycle
runspercycle 5                 # the number of amdump runs in dumpcycle days
                              # (4 weeks * 5 amdump runs per week -- just weekdays)
tapecycle 25 tapes             # the number of tapes in rotation
                              # 4 weeks (dumpcycle) times 5 tapes per week (just
                              # the weekdays) plus a few to handle errors that
                              # need amflush and so we do not overwrite the full
                              # backups performed at the beginning of the previous
                              # cycle
#runtapes 1                     # number of tapes to be used in a single run of amdump
tpchanger "chg-multi"           # the tape-changer glue script
#tapedev "file://var/lib/amanda/vtapes/DailySet1" # the no-rewind tape device to be used
changerfile "/etc/amanda/DailySet1/chg-multi-mirror.conf"
#changerdev "/dev/null"
tapetype DLT               # what kind of tape it is
#labelstr "^rait-[0-9][0-9]*$"    # label constraint regex: all tapes must match
dtimeout 1800                          # number of idle seconds before a dump is aborted.
ctimeout 30                            # maximum number of seconds that amcheck waits
                                      # for each client host
etimeout 300                           # number of seconds per filesystem for estimates.
includefile "./advanced.conf"
includefile "/etc/amanda/template.d/dumptypes"
includefile "/etc/amanda/template.d/tapetypes"

We create the file chg-multi-mirror.conf in the same directory, with these contents:

multieject 0
needeject 0
gravity 0
ejectdelay 0
statefile /etc/amanda/DailySet1/changerstatus
firstslot 1
lastslot 5
slot 1 rait:{file:/var/lib/amanda/vtapes/DailySet1/vtape1,tape:/dev/nst0}
slot 2 rait:{file:/var/lib/amanda/vtapes/DailySet1/vtape2,tape:/dev/nst0}
slot 3 rait:{file:/var/lib/amanda/vtapes/DailySet1/vtape3,tape:/dev/nst0}
slot 4 rait:{file:/var/lib/amanda/vtapes/DailySet1/vtape4,tape:/dev/nst0}
slot 5 rait:{file:/var/lib/amanda/vtapes/DailySet1/vtape5,tape:/dev/nst0}

This assumes we have only 1 tapedrive (/dev/nst0), which we need to manually change the tape each day.

RAIT with a real tape changer is not supported.

We create the 5 virtual tapes:

$ for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do mkdir -p /var/lib/amanda/vtapes/DailySet1/vtape$i/data; done

We insert a tape in the physical tapedrive, and label the first tape. This will label both the virtual tape vtape1 and the tape in the physical drive identically:

$ amlabel daily DAILY-01 slot 1
$ amcheck daily