Re: [BackupPC-users] save backuppc backups on a ultrium tape

[Arnold K. <ar...@ar...>]

On Fri, 15 Nov 2013 11:17:07 -0600 Les Mikesell <les...@gm...>
wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 15, 2013 at 9:45 AM, in...@ne...
> <in...@ne...> wrote:
> > On 11/15/2013 03:38 PM, in...@ne... wrote:
> >
> > Or simply can i put /dev/st0 to # The path on the local file system
> > where archives will be written:
> > $Conf{ArchiveDest} =
> 
> That would be part of an 'archivehost' setup.  It may work but you'd
> have to start the run from the web page and you can probably get
> better performance from your tape drive if you pipe the output of
> Backuppc_tarCreate through dd with some appropriate block size.  Or if
> you have extra disk space, write intermediate tar files to some
> holding space so you have a better chance of keeping the tape
> streaming.

We do exactly that: Trigger an archive-host to dump encrypted tars of
the last backup of all (or selected) machines into a dir. This
archive-host has a pre-script that mount the dump-dir via nfs (because
backuppc runs on its own virtual machine and the streamer isn't yet
virtualized). In the post-script the dir is unmounted and on the
streamer-machine amanda is started to dump the tars to tape in an
orderly fashion. Using amanda and not just dd to dump the tars has the
advantage that you get an index of your tape-contents and can restore
single tars from the middle of the tape.

We do have another type of archive-host that mounts an iscsi-device,
writes encrypted tars of all machines and unmounts the iscsi again...

Probably we should publish these script some time. Probably together
with the Chef-recipes to configure backuppc and its clients.

Have fun,

Arnold