Re: Adding backup storage

[David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com>]

On 8/5/23 12:03, gene heskett wrote:
> I've an asus mobo with 6 sata ports, 5 are busy.
>
> I also have another 6 port with 4 ports tied up serving a raid 10 for 
> /home.  That leaves 2 ports empty on that controller.
>
> I have a handful of 2T SSD's. If I can find another 4 pin empty pigtail 
> on the psu, I'll plug 2 of these 2T's into that aux controller,
>
> What doc should I follow to bring these 2 drives into one volume managed 
> partition for amanda's use as a vtape device? I'd assume the volume 
> management works by now, but it was a data losing disaster 15+ years ago 
> when I last tried it.
>
> I could, since amanda is quite versatile, set it up as two separate 
> vtape drives.  So I'm open to a pro/con discussion.  Thanks all.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett.


I agree with other readers that using two SSD's in RAID1 as Amanda 
backup media seems unusual, but ZFS can easily accomplish this:

https://wiki.debian.org/ZFS


Creating a ZFS pool of mirrored drives is a one-liner (untested code):

# zpool create tank mirror /dev/sde /dev/sdf


See zpool(8) for details.


The above command will create a ZFS pool that presents a default file 
system mounted at:

/tank


You can use a ZFS pool root file system just like any other Unix file 
system -- create/read/update/delete files/directories, run userland 
tools, system services, etc. --  but most people create additional file 
systems within their pools.  This allows them to assign different ZFS 
property values to different file systems and/or (untested code):

# zfs create -p tank/amanda/vtape

# zfs set mountpoint=/var/amanda/vtape tank/amanda/vtape

# zfs set compression=on tank/amanda/vtape

# zfs create tank/amanda/vtape/amanda-vtape-1

# zfs create tank/amanda/vtape/amanda-vtape-2

# zfs create tank/amanda/vtape/amanda-vtape-3


See zfs(8) for details.


The above commands will present file systems mounted at:

/var/amanda/vtape/amanda-vtape-1

/var/amanda/vtape/amanda-vtape-2

/var/amanda/vtape/amanda-vtape-3


Beware that ZFS is not natively supported on Debian due to license 
incompatibilities.  So, you will need to install ZFS packages.  It is 
wise to also install Debian and the ZFS packages onto a USB flash drive, 
so that you have a tool available for system administration and/or 
rescue operations.


David