Amanda is a free backup system designed to archive many computers on a network to a large-capacity tape drive. Amanda has one central holding disk to which all dumps are made across the network.
Data compression is done on the client end to reduce network bandwidth.
Dump files are then put onto the high-capacity tape when it becomes available. Amanda does it's own dump level scheduling so that it can balance filesystem dumps and store more data in a multi day tape cycle than could be stored by running the same dump levels for every machine each night. Storage devices can be placed throughout the network as NetWorker storage nodes, and can be managed as if they are locally attached. All savesets can be staged from any device controlled by a NetWorker server to any other device controlled by a NetWorker server. For short backup windows, NetWorker will recognize files as supported devices, enabling administrators to choose to do backup and recover from hard disk, instead of tape drives.