Discussions related to exporting backups to tape and backing up directly to tape.
Post Reply
Kennea
Lurker
Posts: 1
Liked: 2 times
Joined: Feb 05, 2015 9:50 pm
Full Name: Kenneth Allen
Contact:

Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by Kennea » 2 people like this post

Good Morning All!

We are running v8 (8.0.0.917) and I ran into a bit of an issue:
Our Monthly backup filled up the available tapes and went into a "Waiting for inventory" state. In an attempt to add more space for the job, I was stuck!
According to Veeam the tape drive was locked as "in use" and would not unlock to allow more tapes to erased and added to the inventory, thus allowing the Backup to Tape job to complete.

It would be great if there was a function to pause or suspend a Backup to Tape job, telling Veeam to release the tape drive for other functions. That way if a job was to run out of resources the admin could
insert new tapes to the library, erase them if need be and then resume the job.

currently the job can ONLY be stopped which means you are forced to lose the work done and start it over after enough space has been made available to accommodate the ENTIRE job run a second time...

In summary:
A pause or suspend feature for Backup to Tape jobs.

Kenneth Allen
Dima P.
Product Manager
Posts: 14396
Liked: 1568 times
Joined: Feb 04, 2013 2:07 pm
Full Name: Dmitry Popov
Location: Prague
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by Dima P. »

Hello Kenneth,

Perfect request, thank you! I’ll bring it to the next feature request meeting.
sylvain
Lurker
Posts: 1
Liked: never
Joined: Jul 22, 2016 2:47 pm
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by sylvain »

Good day,

Was this feature ever discussed internally at Veeam, and my has it been added to the v9 release ?

I agree with Kenneth, it really is painful to have to re run an entire backup just because there are no way to tell Veeam that you actually provided another tape. :cry:

Thank you
Sylvain
rreed
Veteran
Posts: 354
Liked: 72 times
Joined: Jun 30, 2015 6:06 pm
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by rreed »

+1 for this for same/similar reasons please.
VMware 6
Veeam B&R v9
Dell DR4100's
EMC DD2200's
EMC DD620's
Dell TL2000 via PE430 (SAS)
gparker
Enthusiast
Posts: 58
Liked: 6 times
Joined: Feb 01, 2012 2:24 am
Full Name: George Parker
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by gparker »

+1 from me too! I'm running Veeam v9.0.0.1491 connected to a single tape drive (not a library) and when a tape becomes full and I eject it and load in a new tape, Veeam won't let me do a drive inventory because "all drives are busy". In my scenario, it's pointless for me to cancel the job just so I can do an inventory and restart the job because the amount of data in the tape job requires more than one tape.
Help!
CamoPoP
Lurker
Posts: 2
Liked: never
Joined: Mar 05, 2018 12:18 am
Full Name: Nick Thomson

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by CamoPoP »

Guys is there a fix to this issue? Currently on latest v9.5 and can still not pause tape backups as mentioned above by gparker. Do any Veeam admins look at these posts?
Dima P.
Product Manager
Posts: 14396
Liked: 1568 times
Joined: Feb 04, 2013 2:07 pm
Full Name: Dmitry Popov
Location: Prague
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by Dima P. »

Hello and welcome to the community forums Nick.

Can you please clarify your setup? Thank you in advance.
CamoPoP
Lurker
Posts: 2
Liked: never
Joined: Mar 05, 2018 12:18 am
Full Name: Nick Thomson

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by CamoPoP »

Hi Dima
Server 2012 R2 with Vcenter 6
Veeam 9.5.0.1536 with HP 1x8 G2 Autoloader tape drive.

We run one weekly tape backup job which uses less than 3 LTO-5 tapes each time. Sometimes however we may get a large amount of additional data which requires an additional tape. This job runs over the weekend so when I arrive back to the office on a Monday and see the prompt for an additional tape I want to be able to simply put the job on hold while I place a new tape in the drive, run an inventory and erase function before resuming the job again. At this stage you cannot do this you can only stop the job (effectivley cancelling) and leaving no choice but to run it all over again. Hoping for a fix to this, is there something I'm missing or a way to get around this?

Cheers
Dima P.
Product Manager
Posts: 14396
Liked: 1568 times
Joined: Feb 04, 2013 2:07 pm
Full Name: Dmitry Popov
Location: Prague
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by Dima P. »

Thanks for the clarification Nick. If a drive is occupied by backup or restore activity it cannot be used for other tasks. Added your vote to this feature request.
Ian Kmec
Lurker
Posts: 1
Liked: never
Joined: Feb 15, 2019 4:05 pm
Full Name: Ian Kmec
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by Ian Kmec »

We run daily uploads to the cloud using a tape library setup. Having the ability to temporarily stop and restart these jobs will be significantly more productive than what we are currently doing which ends up being failing the job then restarting that same upload creating unnecessary duplication of data. Can you please consider this for your next update release of VEEAM 9.5?
Dima P.
Product Manager
Posts: 14396
Liked: 1568 times
Joined: Feb 04, 2013 2:07 pm
Full Name: Dmitry Popov
Location: Prague
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by Dima P. »

Hello and welcome to the community Ian,

May I ask why you would like to pause the tape job? To limit the network usage during emulated tape media upload (if read correctly you are using vtl to ship emulated tape media to S3)? Thanks!
eugeneA
Lurker
Posts: 1
Liked: never
Joined: Jul 10, 2018 11:04 pm
Full Name: Ujjwal Aryal
Contact:

[MERGED] Can you pause a veeam backup and resume

Post by eugeneA »

Hi,

It would be very useful especially while running monthly tape backup job. For instance, it takes 2 days for me to backup file server onto tape library and I cannot run regular daily backup for that server during that period. If we had a pause button, I could simply pause the tape job, run the regular job and resume tape job once regular incremental job is complete.

Is anyone else running into this issue or is it just me? ;-)

Regards,
Eugene
HannesK
Product Manager
Posts: 14287
Liked: 2877 times
Joined: Sep 01, 2014 11:46 am
Full Name: Hannes Kasparick
Location: Austria
Contact:

Re: Can you pause a veeam backup and resume

Post by HannesK »

Hello,
and welcome to the forums. I split your question away from the old topic as it it more tape specific.

If I understood you correctly, then setting Prevent this job from being interrupted by source backup jobs should do the job

Best regards,
Hannes
Sloan
Enthusiast
Posts: 27
Liked: 2 times
Joined: Jan 14, 2013 6:40 pm
Full Name: Sloan Essman
Location: Houston, TX
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by Sloan »

I could use a pause feature for file to tape jobs.

I have a tape job that runs into the day, but I sometimes have an application group who needs to write a backup to disk for some upgrade or fix during the day. They end up waiting for hours to proceed to their next step while their backup runs. I can kill my tape job and their performance improves, but then I have to start over with my tape job. Then there is much glaring and pointing of fingers from the management level as to why everything didn't complete. Then heaven forbid somebody happens to ask "Can't netbackup or networker pause a tape job? Have we looked into them?" Then I spend weeks explaining again why Veeam is better!

Save me Veeam! Let me pause a tape job.
Sloan Essman
Lead Specialist - Backups and Data Protection
Energy Transfer Partners
Dima P.
Product Manager
Posts: 14396
Liked: 1568 times
Joined: Feb 04, 2013 2:07 pm
Full Name: Dmitry Popov
Location: Prague
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by Dima P. » 1 person likes this post

Thanks for the feedback Sloan. I've added your vote to this feature request. Cheers!
thomas.biesmans
Enthusiast
Posts: 36
Liked: 13 times
Joined: Mar 22, 2013 10:35 am
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by thomas.biesmans »

A pause or quick resume feature would be lovely to perform maintenance ;)
Dima P.
Product Manager
Posts: 14396
Liked: 1568 times
Joined: Feb 04, 2013 2:07 pm
Full Name: Dmitry Popov
Location: Prague
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by Dima P. »

Hello Thomas,

Mind me asking what maintenance window you have in mind? I.e. for how long you would need to pause the tape job? Thanks!
thomas.biesmans
Enthusiast
Posts: 36
Liked: 13 times
Joined: Mar 22, 2013 10:35 am
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by thomas.biesmans » 1 person likes this post

Hey Dima,

In this case it was moving a VBRCatalog, so about 30-40 minutes in all. In other cases it's often a reboot or a version update.

Currently I do something like the regular backup job's functionality (which might be a good middle road), where you can choose an immediate or graceful stop: regularly checking how far along the current Backup Job in a Backup to Tape job is, stopping it when he starts a new one (if time permits, because often this is half way through the biggest job...). This way the job can continue after maintenance with the leftovers, while not wasting too much offload time. Having that functionality in an automated fashion would be good, but having a true pause would still be better of course. ;D
Dima P.
Product Manager
Posts: 14396
Liked: 1568 times
Joined: Feb 04, 2013 2:07 pm
Full Name: Dmitry Popov
Location: Prague
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by Dima P. » 1 person likes this post

Thomas,

Got it! Thanks for the feedback, I've added that to the feature request.
mdsullivan
Novice
Posts: 4
Liked: never
Joined: Sep 07, 2011 1:10 am
Full Name: Mike Sullivan
Contact:

Re: Feature Request: Pause or Hold a Backup to Tape Job

Post by mdsullivan »

Will a pause feature be implemented. We have been encountering issues with L9 media humidity sensitivity. I would like to be able via powershell to pause a job so that we can allow a monitoring device to stop and start jobs when there is an HVAC issue otherwise we have to restart a job that can take days.
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 15 guests