Veeam Tape Backup Selection Questions

[joshwright10]

Hi All,

I am seeking some advise on Veeam and its tape backup configuration.
We are migrating from BackupExec, so please correct me if I need to change my mindset and the way in which I am approaching things.

Objective
Backup VMs then copy the backup data to Tape on a Daily, weekly and Monthly Basis
Copy full backup to Tape once the Weekend job has finished and incrementals to be copied to tapes labels by their day.
For example:
Monday Incremental will go to the MON Tapes housed in library slot 1 & 2
Tuesday Incremental will go to the TUE Tapes housed in library slot 3 & 4
.
.
Saturday Full Backup will go to the Weekly Tapes housed in library slots 21 - 26

Is this setup even possible with Veeam?
This is the behaviour we have been working with for the last 5 years with BackupExec, so if there is a better way with Veeam, please do enlighten me.

The only other way I can see doing this is to use media pools and a different job for each day.
I don't really like this approach as it would leave us with more jobs to update when new servers are added.


Also, if anyone can point me towards a good Blog or set of documents other than the Veeam Deployment or Best Practise guide, that would be very very helpful!

Thank you

Josh

[Shestakov]

Hi Josh and welcome to the community!

Backup VMs then copy the backup data to Tape on a Daily, weekly and Monthly Basis
Copy full backup to Tape once the Weekend job has finished and incrementals to be copied to tapes labels by their day.

There are 2 types of backup to tape jobs: regular and GFS ones.
Could you clarify the tape jobs schedule(your desired tape backup policy) please?

Also, if anyone can point me towards a good Blog or set of documents other than the Veeam Deployment or Best Practise guide, that would be very very helpful!

Here is a great read about best practices.

[joshwright10]

Hi Shestakov,

I looked at the GFS Media Pool but that seemed to be for Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly & Yearly.
I can't see anything for daily incremental backup to tape jobs.

The desired Schedule would be as follows:

Saturday Full Backup to Disk > Second Location to Weekend Tapes 11-17
Monday Incremental to Disk > Second Location to Monday Tapes in slot 1-2
Tuesday Incremental to Disk > Second Location to Monday Tapes in slot 3-4
Wednesday Incremental to Disk > Second Location to Monday Tapes in slot 5-6
Thursday Incremental to Disk > Second Location to Monday Tapes in slot 7-8
Friday Incremental to Disk > Second Location to Monday Tapes in slot 9-10

Thanks for the BP link - I find it is pretty good, but lacks real world scenarios or explanations to many of the options.

[Shestakov]

You are right, GFS Media pool doesn`t have "Daily" media set, i.e. if you want daily backups on the tapes, you need another media pool.
Could you explain why you need every backup of the chain to be written to the new tape? In a case of restore you will need all the tapes of the chain.
However you can implement it with the option "Creating a new media set for each backup session."
Thanks!