Latest Full + All Incrementas to Tape?

[firefox15]

Hi All,

We are trialing Veeam in an attempt to move away from BE. For the past couple weeks, we have been using a B2D repository in incremental mode with synthetic fulls getting created every Saturday and the previous chains getting transformed to rollbacks. We have are keeping 30 recovery points, and so far this is working fantastic.

However, my difficulty comes with tape. Basically, we have an older tape drive that we would like to use as a second backup destination. Ideally, we would like to have the latest full plus all incrementals since then to be backed up every night to our single slot tape drive. I've tried using different settings, but it appears that Veeam really just wants to backup the full backup once. I believe that using reverse incrementals would "solve" this, but our B2D repo is just SATA disks with poor IOPS, so I would rather avoid that if possible.

What options do I have here other than using reverse incrementials? Should I schedule a file to tape job and mask out the .vrb files? Are there settings I can change in our current setup to make this work? Is there a way I can do this while still leveraging our existing setup? Thanks for any help!

[veremin]

So, you want to copy latest full plus all dependent increments on a daily basis? So, on Sunday you want to copy: Act (Sat) + Inc (Sun); on Monday: Act (Sat) + Inc (Sun) + Inc (Monday), etc., right? For how long are you planning to preserve data on tapes? Thanks.

[Shestakov]

Hi Alex and welcome to the community!
Could you specify why you need to copy same backups every day?
Indeed the backup-to-tape job copies only missing(new) restore points, while file-to-tape job can copy all the files.
Thanks!

[firefox15]

So, you want to copy latest full plus all dependent increments on a daily basis? So, on Sunday you want to copy: Act (Sat) + Inc (Sun); on Monday: Act (Sat) + Inc (Sun) + Inc (Monday), etc., right? For how long are you planning to preserve data on tapes? Thanks.

You got it. I'm actually only backing up to tape M-F while my B2D runs every day, but the concept is the same. We have a very simple tape media pool in that they are just daily tapes. We have 20 of them which is good for a month. After tape 20 is in, we cycle back around to tape 1.

[firefox15]

Hi Alex and welcome to the community!
Could you specify why you need to copy same backups every day?
Indeed the backup-to-tape job copies only missing(new) restore points, while file-to-tape job can copy all the files.
Thanks!

Truthfully, it is because the people who change the tapes are notoriously unreliable. In addition, tapes get misplaced, and it would be difficult enough to explain which tapes contain the full and need protected along with the tapes that contain the incrementals. For these users, I really need everything on one tape since we have the tape space right now. Having to rely on multiple tapes will be difficult for this environment.

[veremin]

In this case, you will need to create a files to tape job, specify .vib and .vbk as file masks for it, and make it run always run full backup. Thanks.

[Shestakov]

Truthfully, it is because the people who change the tapes are notoriously unreliable. In addition, tapes get misplaced, and it would be difficult enough to explain which tapes contain the full and need protected along with the tapes that contain the incrementals.

If you use Veeam ONE, Tape Backups report maintains a record of VMs archived to tape which can be useful in your case.
Also you may consider cloud backup as an alternative of tape backups.
Thanks!

[roywong4u]

Support ID: 00723767

i would like to ask how to configure the backup to tape job that everyday can backup all restore point to tape which mean everyday is full backup.

i try forever incremental on the VM to disk backup,
its always backup the vib, exclude vbk.

[veremin]

Hi, Roy, kindly, see the solution proposed above. Thanks.

[larry]

I do this by creating a backup copy job to a repository that is nothing but my data for a tape jobs. Then create a copy file to tape job that will back-up the backups folder of the repository. I found my tape backups are quicker (LTO 6- 150Mbps, LTO 7 300Mbs) this way and total backup window is smaller. The backup files are not locked by the tape job, can rerun during the day with no impact on production, can create a legal hold tape with same data. I use USB 3 disks for this temporary repositories, very cheap and if fails no big deal as it is only a holding spot. Now I can pick what number of restore points I want to send to tape by selecting the full retention options available in backup copy jobs. Some VMs I want just the full other I want the backups from every hour all day. Some I keep 31 days of restore points on every tape other VMs by Policy I can never have more than 2 weeks’ worth of data backed up. You can have the tape job started automatically after the last backup copy job finishes.

[firefox15]

This seems very clever to me. I really like how you leverage the copy jobs to get additional control. I'll definitely keep this in mind if I want to gain more control over the operation.