Backup to tape advice

[robm82]

Hi everyone,

I am after some advice if possible please around backups to tape. We currently have several daily backups to disk jobs and several weekly to disk jobs. We currently only have a single Weekly Backup to Tape job, which puts a copy of the weekly Veeam backups onto tape. We however use this job, for storing weekly backups onto tape which get rotated every month. We then also use this same job on the last Friday to put backups onto a monthly tape, which never gets re-used and these monthly tapes will be kept forever. I then protect the monthly tapes within Veeam, to make sure that they never get overwritten as we have an overwrite protect policy of 4 weeks on the Media Pool.

One reason I don't use the GFS is that the backup tape job schedule would seem to schedule two tape backups on the Friday and also I didn't know how to control the GFS Tape Job so that it would backup the latest backup to disk weekly. So basically after the backup to disk runs on a Friday, I want it to go straight onto tape as that is the latest data. You can't seem to control GFS jobs in this method - you can only select days of the week. Whereas a standard backup to tape job I can get the tape job to run as soon as it sees new backups files.

My question: Is the above configuration correct or is there some other method that I should be using to segregate out between weeklies and monthlies? I have looked at GFS, but it just seemed overly complicated for my needs. One annoyance of using a singular weekly media pool, is that the list of tapes in this pool just keeps growing and growing as we introduce more monthly tapes.

Any advice or best practice guidelines would be greatly appreciated, as I am not convinced we have backup to tapes setup correctly.

Many thanks.

[robm82]

Anyone have any advice?

[lyapkost]

Hi, Robert. Why didn't you create extra media pool (and an extra backup to tape job scheduled once a month) for monthly backups with 'never' retention Instead of manually protecting сertain tapes in your weekly pool?

[Dima P.]

Hi robm82,

Plan looks good, but I'd suggest to review the tape GFS logic once again. Why? Because it’s designed specifically for a case like yours when you what a full backup to be archived to tape. Kindly, take a look at GFS Backup to Tape article

I don't use the GFS is that the backup tape job schedule would seem to schedule two tape backups on the Friday

When GFS schedule for weeklies and monthlies overlaps, backup goes to the media set with longest retention (so in your case backup will go directly to monthly media set bypassing the weekly)

I didn't know how to control the GFS Tape Job so that it would backup the latest backup to disk weekly.

There is no need to define the actual start time for GFS tape job since it has ‘continues’ logic. You define the date when you want a full backup to be written to tape. Tape job starts to look for the restore point during the set day (24 hours) or will await for this restore point to be created.