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Using Amanda Enterprise 3.0 on Sun Fire X4500 Server With OpenSolaris 2008.11 OS

Caryl Takvorian, May 2009

Introduction

The objective of this paper is to describe how to deploy Amanda Enterprise 3.0 from Zmanda on OpenSolaris 2008.11 OS on a Sun Fire X4500 system using ZFS file systems, and to show how Amanda performs.

In particular, the paper will demonstrate how Amanda Enterprise takes advantage of Solaris ZFS snapshot technology to improve overall backup performance.

Note: In this scenario, the Sun Fire X4500 server acted as the backup server, while a Sun Fire X4200 server acted as the backup client.

For more details, see the list of contents below.

Download the document as PDF.

Contents

• Introduction
• Architecture Overview
  • OpenSolaris OS Configuration on Sun Fire X4500 Server
  • ZFS File System Configuration
    • Zpool Configuration
    • ZFS Configuration
  • Amanda Enterprise Configuration
    • Installing Required Dependencies Using pkgadd
    • Installing Required Dependencies Using OpenSolaris IPS
    • Installing Amanda Enterprise
• Performance Test Setup
  • System Setup
  • Amanda Enterprise Software Release
  • OpenSolaris Operating System Release
  • Zpool Configuration
  • ZFS Configuration
  • Generating the Data Files
  • Testing Methodology
    • Amanda Enterprise Configuration
• Performance Test Results
  • 1. Baseline Throughput
  • 2. Local Backups
  • 3. Network Backups
• Product Information
  • OpenSolaris Operating System
  • ZFS File System
  • Sun Fire X4500 Server
  • Zmanda Amanda Enterprise 3.0
    • Centralized Management for Heterogeneous Environments
• Summary
• Configuration Files
  • Example of Amanda Configuration File Used for the 10-GB Backup Set
  • Example of Disklist Entry (DLE) File Defined for a Network Backup Using zfs-sendrecv
• About the Author

For More Information

Here are additional resources.

Zmanda Resources:

• Zmanda Amanda Enterprise web site
• Amanda wiki
• Zmanda forums
• Resources on Zmanda Network (requires registration):
  • Download for Amanda Enterprise Edition
  • Documentation for Amanda Enterprise Edition

Sun Fire Server Resources:

• BigAdmin article: Sun Fire X4540 Server as Backup Server for Zmanda's Amanda Enterprise 2.6 Software
• Sun Fire X4500 Server document collection on docs.sun.com

OpenSolaris Resources:

• OpenSolaris 2009.06 Image Packing System Guide (PDF)
• OpenSolaris web site

ZFS documentation:

• Solaris ZFS Administration Guide (part of the Solaris 10 System Administration Collection)
• ZFS Best Practices Guide on the Solaris Internals web site

Other Sun Resources:

• Sun documents at http://docs.sun.com
• Sun training courses at http://www.sun.com/training/
• Discussions:
  • Sun Storage forums
  • Sun Hardware - Servers forums
• Wikis:
  • Sun BluePrints wiki, especially the Storage BluePrints page
  • Sun Storage Administration wiki
  • BigAdmin Storage Tech Tips wiki
• Other storage resources:
  • BigAdmin Storage Resource Collection (includes community content)
  • Sun Storage web site
  • Storage Stop Blog
• Support:
  • Register your Sun gear
  • Services
  • SunSolve Online
• Events of interest to users of Sun products:
  • Worldwide Developer Events and Sun Tech Days
  • Current Events

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