Tape Error handling

[gmorris]

I have come across a few times where Veeam has problems writing to a tape,
I have opened a support case [ID# 00832713] and they recommend submitting a feature request to change the tape error handling.

Basically The tape job failed with Tape positioning error, all following jobs using that Media pool failed also, because it keeps trying to use the same tape. I formated the tape and the jobs then ran ok.
Tape error handling needs to be improved so that one tape error does not affect all jobs and it will try more than one tape.
Also tape jobs do not have any option to retry if they fail.

thanks,

Glen

[Dima P.]

Hello Glen,
Can you elaborate why the specific tape media was causing issues? Was it used by other vendor before?

Generally, I like the idea of corrupted media being skipped by all tape jobs and of course, we will add the retry functionality in next versions, thanks for pushing.

[gmorris]

I am not sure why Veeam had an issue with the tape, the tape is new, Most of the time this happens the tape library [IBM TS3100 with 2 LTO 6 drives] reports the drive needs cleaning [auto cleaning is setup]. After formatting the tape Veeam does not have problems writing to the same tape.
Previously we used Backup Exec [similar but older tape library] it too requested cleaning occasionally but jobs never failed like this.
It would be nice if Veeam has issues backing up to tape to mark the tape as bad and then try a new tape.

[Dima P.]

Glen,
Thank you for the clarification - it is a good request and I’ll discuss it with the team. Cheers.