features request

[grietvandemaele]

when the tape was forgotten, we'd like to cancel the tape job. after a couple of hours

Currently there are no such timeouts - the backup job will wait until the tape will be inserted.

The job will fail due to agents timeout - and this is 1 week.

Has anyone a solution?

[veremin]

There is a predefined alarm in Veeam ONE that tracks job duration. You can specify the required time interval and, thus, you will be notified if any job exceeds it.

Otherwise, you can put into use simple powershell script that will check the time tape job was started and compare it with the current time. If delta exceeds specified interval, the script will stop the job.

Thanks.

[Dima P.]

Hello Griet,

We have already submitted a request for backup to tape job to generate notification if it is sitting in waiting status for long time, so it would be implemented in the upcoming releases. Thank you for your feedback!

[dfernandez]

Another feature request....... Can we please have the tape backup schedule for Monthly to have the option to backup on the last or first "date" of the month. Currently we can only backup on the last Monday or Tuesday or.....Sunday.

[veremin]

Hi, Dominic,

You’re, probably, talking about first day and last day of month, right? For now in the monthly schedule of backup job you can only set first/last day of week. However, you can write a PS script that initiates a start of tape job and schedule this script via Task Scheduler to run on first/last day of month:

Code: Select all

asnp VeeamPSSnapin
Get-VBRTapeJob -name "Name of tape job" | Start-VBRJob

Anyway, thanks for the feedback; much appreciated.

Thanks.

[vu1341]

Hello,

I want to run my monthly Backup to Tape Job on 3am on every 1st day of the month.
At the moment I have to reconfigure the Job every month because I have to specify
this special weekday for the next month.
Will this feature be available in future releases?

regards
michael

[veremin]

Hi, Michael,

As mentioned above, currently, it's not possible to schedule tape job to run on first/last day of month. However, you can schedule via Windows Scheduler the aforesaid script in order to achieve what you're after.

Thanks.

[patboy29]

An option to auto cancel the backup to tape job after "X" minutes/hours/Day can be very, very useful for backup to tape.

As an example: A small environment with a single tape drive, if someone didn't to add a new tape because of a long week end, the backup to tape job will wait for a new tape and then the backup jobs will overlap on the next days.

I saw the suggestion to put this on a powershell script, but this is not a long term solution because this is configured outside of the Veeam Management Console.

Anyway, is it possible to get an example of the powershell commands for that script so I can have a workarounds?

Thanks

[foggy]

Patrick, thank you for the feedback. I believe our PowerShell guru will come up with some examples for you right when he is back from vacation.

[KerryETB]

I would also like to have the monthly tape backup to have the option to backup on the last or first "date" of the month. I know there is a script option but I would like to manage all the jobs from one screen instead of having to jump out to the scheduler

[veremin]

These forums are monitored for potential software enhancements and improvements. So, thank you for your feedback, we do appreciate it.

[ericcsinger]

I have a few requests, some of these stem from what I like about other traditional backup products:

On thing that I love, but also hate about Veeam, is the way you control retention. I'm sure for a few, number of restore points are easy to understand, but for me, I find this method not complete enough by its self. I'd like to see an option for an age requirement. For example, restore points can't be purged until they're at least 14 days old. Maybe even add in a sub-requirement that there must be "x" number of full backup's as well.

Reverse CBT restore, in the event that we do need to rollback a VM, this would be awesome.

Why can't enterprise manager, manage multiple license types of Veeam? I have one site where I don't need enterprise plus features and I have another site that does. Why not give me one management console for both?

For tape, i'd like to see striping added in, so i can double my bandwidth / capacity when writing to tape. Also, why does a single job only get one tape drive? Why not provide an option to use more than one tape drive and in essence spread the data across the tapes as they fit best? This would be great when you're copying data from a repository and not just a specific job. If i have 4 tape drive, use all of them. Finally, for tape, i'd love to see tape sharing as an option. This way if one tape proxy goes down, the other proxy can pickup the slack.

I'd love to see the Veeam repository agent support failover clustering, or rather be failover cluster aware. For example, I'm going to be setting up a storage spaces cluster, Rather than mounting it as a CIFS share, i'd love to just have a purpose built cluster aware agent that i can run on it.

I know you're releasing SQL explorer, I'm not sure what all the features would be, but I'd love the ability to not only rollback a DB to a point in time, but even get as granular as rolling back individual records. Maybe i don't need to rollback the whole db, I just need one record recovered.

For sql backups as a whole, the one thing that would prevent our DBA's from switching to veeam for backup, is they need the ability to backup transaction logs as a separate event. For example, they backup transaction logs, and copy them to our DR site and replay them on a running SQL server. Having an ability to do something like that would be awesome. (poor mans TL shipping)

I'd love to see work flows built into the GUI. For example, backup in primary site, copy data to dr site, run an automatic restore (file level).

[Dima P.]

Hello Eric,
Thank you for the brilliant feedback!

For example, restore points can't be purged until they're at least 14 days old. Maybe even add in a sub-requirement that there must be "x" number of full backup's as well.

This could be achieved by planning you backup job correctly – modifying your retention/schedule according to your backup plan.

Reverse CBT restore, in the event that we do need to rollback a VM, this would be awesome.

We are looking into this.

Why can't enterprise manager, manage multiple license types of Veeam??

Please, review this thread

For tape, i'd like to see striping added in, so i can double my bandwidth / capacity when writing to tape.

Could you, please, elaborate this one?

Also, why does a single job only get one tape drive?

This is by design, but could be changed in future if we receive enough customer’s requests.

Why not provide an option to use more than one tape drive and in essence spread the data across the tapes as they fit best?

Valid request but, unfortunately, with low priority, as we’ve seen only a few requests for this feature.

Finally, for tape, i'd love to see tape sharing as an option. This way if one tape proxy goes down, the other proxy can pickup the slack.

We do not have plans for implementing tape sharing option, however, we tested the high redundancy/high availability tape library, which provides more than one link to backup server with our software and it worked pretty great.

I'd love to see the Veeam repository agent support failover clustering, or rather be failover cluster aware.

Please, review this thread

I know you're releasing SQL explorer

Unfortunately, can’t provide you with the details, before the official announcements, so stay tuned.

I'd love to see work flows built into the GUI.

This seems to be a nice to have feature for users who are not familiar with UI or power shall scripting, as every set up ends up with ‘to be as custom as possible’- and in this case workflow would not be useful. However, these are my personal thoughts – so we will discuss this feature it with the team. Thank you.

[jchydro]

Good day,

I'm following up on a Veeam case (#00563889) where I inquired as to why the Restore Operator has the right to right-click on a VM under Backup > Tape and choose 'Restore Backup from tape to repository...' but yet when the same option is attempted from the Home Ribbon under RESTORE > TAPE, the account has the TAPE selection greyed out. This option, of course, shows up perfectly fine when accessed with an account with full admin permissions.

Both methods of navigation get to the same restore screen, but the ribbon method is simplier, and doesn't involve digging to find/select a VM.
This also eliminates the need to locate via jobname - as the VM can be simply searched. Our Restore Operators will not likely care about our jobnames - just finding the VM being requested.

Hopefully this can be corrected in the next patch release - our Restore Operators will apprecriate this more direct method being available.

Thanks!

[Dima P.]

Hello,
Thank you for pointing this out - it looks like a bug, as restore operator should have permissions to operate with this part of UI. I will forward it to our QA team for investigation and fixing.

[Dima P.]

Once again thank you for your post! QA confirmed this bug and forwarded it to a developers team for a fix. Most probably the fix would be merged in to VBR v8.

[ericcsinger]

IMHO, relying on restore points is a less ideal method for keeping retention in check. It just makes things more complex than it need to be. Retention based on age is a much simpler (reliable) retention method. With restore point method I have to make sure I count how many restore points i'm going to use. If i decided to run a few one off backups, now I have to make sure I temporarily increase my restore points. It would be so much easier if it just kept data for "x" period of time, no matter how many backup's a made. On top of that, a great option to go with it, would be the ability to delete a restore point and basically merge the blocks in (mid-stream if need be). I've personally spoken not only with other Veeam users about this, but with your own sales engineers, and most are in agreement. Not to say that i'm speaking for the majority here. CommVault would be an example of how i think retention is done right...

For the enterprise manager, I'm not sure I'm following. I have a standard license and an enterprise license. Are you saying i can import both into enterprise manager and then distribute them and manage each discrete Veeam Server (single pane of glass)?

For the single tape drive, seriously, absolutely a ridiculous design (for enterprises). I have 50TB+ of data to backup, 4 tape drives and 120 slots. I'm supposed to manually load balance all of that? You automatically pick proxy servers for backup/replication based on job load, tape needs the same automation / capability. I get its a v1.0, but for me, I still need CommVault for tape, which stinks.

For the workflows, PowerShell is great, and I'm fine with PowerShell, except not everyone is good at powershell. I get that workflows wouldn't be easy, but it's something that would totally be useful.

Finally, in looking at how Veeam works with tape, it's just ugly IMO. I'm not even talking about your tape v1.0 implementation here, i'm saying in general. Your product is just not tape friendly. Here's the problem, If I have a large VM, that i'm sending to DR (4TB for example). If I need to restore one folder out of that VM, i need to restore the 4TB file from tape to disk just so I can get access to folder "x". It would be awesome if there was a way to have the VM's stored in min-flat files that were spanned based on some sector algorithm or something. Meaning if I have a 4TB vm, break it up into %adjustable GB chunk size% chuncks and Veeam would know what chunks are needed to recover file / folder "x". I don't know, maybe since you're doing image based backups that wouldn't work, but who knows, there's companies that recover data from failed drives so it has to be possible.

Anyway it probably sounds really negative, but I do love your product, I just want to see more enterprise ideas incorporated into the product.

[veremin]

For the enterprise manager, I'm not sure I'm following. I have a standard license and an enterprise license. Are you saying i can import both into enterprise manager and then distribute them and manage each discrete Veeam Server (single pane of glass)?

There must be a certain kind of misunderstanding, as it's not possible to add/distribute licenses of different types via EM. Thanks.

[ericcsinger]

There must be a certain kind of misunderstanding, as it's not possible to add/distribute licenses of different types via EM. Thanks.

Well good we're on the same page, what I'm trying to convey is that once again an ideal way of handling things that I would like to see changed in the future. VMware can manage multiple license types, so why not have Veeam do it? That after all is the point of enterprise manager among many things is to be a single pane of glass.

[foggy]

Retention based on age is a much simpler (reliable) retention method. With restore point method I have to make sure I count how many restore points i'm going to use. If i decided to run a few one off backups, now I have to make sure I temporarily increase my restore points. It would be so much easier if it just kept data for "x" period of time, no matter how many backup's a made.

I would argue the reliability aspect. Think of the situation when backups were not successfully completed for several days for some reason. With the number of days retention you could result in less amount (or even none) of successful restore points.

Thanks for the reasoned feedback, anyway.

[Dima P.]

Hello Eric,

For the single tape drive, seriously, absolutely a ridiculous design (for enterprises). I have 50TB+ of data to backup, 4 tape drives and 120 slots. I'm supposed to manually load balance all of that?

I believe you set up you separate backup to disk jobs and have multiple repositories, right? So, the only thing you need to do with current tape functionality (based on you hardware) - set up four separate media pools with the option to pick free tapes when needed from shared free media pool, create and select either the repository (as a new backup file appear option) or backup to disk jobs as a source for newly-created jobs

If it is possible, please, describe why setting your tape functionality in the way I described is not possible / convenient – and we would gladly discuss your experience with the tape team. Thank you!