A few OpenFiler questions

[pete]

I set up OpenFiler 2.3 for a test run yesterday and backed up one of our fileservers overnight via iscsi as a test run. I'd messed around with it before at home as a quick way of making mounts for vms, but this was the first time I'd used it in anger and I'm rather impressed. So questions:

1) Is the paid-for manual worth it? If it's full of useful info I can't get anywhere else/glean from the forums I'll happily pay, but I wondered if anyone else had bought it and could comment?
2) For those using it with iSCSI targets, do you vlan it off and/or use a dedicated switch?
3) (if you're using it as a backup device) How are you backing up to it?
4) Tape drives - can it handle them or can it be modified to handle them?
4a) If the answer is "yes", have you tried encrypting tapes?

[plexer]

I currently just backup to an smb share on it using backupassist on top of ntbackup.

I have tried using an iscsi target before and then copying that to the share my reason for doing it this was that if I need to restore something from the backup I can do it from the share from anywhere and don't have to connect to the isci target.

I didn't buy the manual but then I bought the server so get support from the supplier.

I have the server in a remote location plugged directly into our core switch via a spare fibre pair with a media converter at the openfiler end.

Ben

[Geoff]

1) No idea.
2) Yes, both.
3) Amanda is included in Openfiler.
4) Again, Amanda is the answer here.
4a) Encryption - The Open Source Backup Wiki (Amanda, MySQL Backup)

[plexer]

Geoff what do you backup to openfiler and what do you use? amanda?

Ben

[Geoff]

I have a duplicate setup. So I backup from my 'Live' openfiler to a duplicate system elsewhere onsite. I use amanda.

[plexer]

I see what sw do you use on your servers? do you back them up to a share or iscsi?

Ben

[Geoff]

The most of the servers are Linux boxes so they amanda as well...

[pete]

Are you running 2.2 Geoff? 2.3 has Bacula, but no Amanda in the repos. There's a distinct lack of info as to whether bacula is being used by openfiler or if it's there as a whim of the developers.