Incremental VBK file copy to tape

[DDIT]

Hi,

I have searched the forums but cannot find this question asked/answered.

• I am using Veeam standard, so only have 'file copy' to tape jobs.
  I have an autoloader with a bunch of free slots and spare LTO 5 tapes (1.4TB)
  I want a copy my backups to tape in case of cryptolocker type issues
  I am running my main disk-based backups using reverse incremental to accommodate copying to tape

My disk-based backups are using reverse incremental, running Monday-Friday, with 20 days retention. I have an existing full copy-to-tape job, which copies the full VBK (around 2TB) to a pair of tapes over the weekend. The tapes are then collected and stored off site. This works fine.

I have a bunch of free slots in the autoloader and a bunch of free tapes and I thought it would be good to keep recent backups on tape to protect against crytolocker, in case my repository got encrypted.

I tried creating a new tape job, targeting the reverse incremental VBK. It was scheduled to copy a full backup on Monday and incremental backups for the rest of the week. What I found was, despite the incremental VRB files only being around 25GB, the changes to the VBK were so great that Veeam copied around 900-1.2TB to tape each night. This quickly filled my pool of spare tapes.

Is there a way to have, say, a weeks worth of backups on tape using the file copy method? And have that rotating, so after a week, it starts overwriting itself? These tapes are due to stay on site in the autoloader.

Thanks in advance.

[Shestakov]

Hi Michael,
Having file to tape jobs only you can set it to run not daily but every 20 days, so you will copy only new restore points.
The current problem is you copy same restore points every job run.
Thanks!

[veremin]

I tried creating a new tape job, targeting the reverse incremental VBK. It was scheduled to copy a full backup on Monday and incremental backups for the rest of the week. What I found was, despite the incremental VRB files only being around 25GB, the changes to the VBK were so great that Veeam copied around 900-1.2TB to tape each night. This quickly filled my pool of spare tapes.

Files to tape job does not indeed recognize block-level changes. Due to that each time it runs, it copies full backup (.vbk) as a whole.

Is there a way to have, say, a weeks worth of backups on tape using the file copy method? And have that rotating, so after a week, it starts overwriting itself?

Would you like to process increments along with full backups or latest full backup being copied on weekly basis would be enough?

Thanks.