Discussions related to exporting backups to tape and backing up directly to tape.
Post Reply
owenw
Influencer
Posts: 19
Liked: never
Joined: Jun 15, 2016 8:32 am
Full Name: Infrastructure Team
Contact:

Reverse Incremental tape jobs

Post by owenw »

I have a question relating to our tape backups

Im running Veeam 9.0.0.1715 on Windows 2012 R2 on a physical server with a FC connected HP 2024 LTO6x2 library.

I have been running reverse incrementals for well over a year now without any issues. These jobs create Per-VM backups in respective repositories.
I have the disk jobs configured to process our VMs in order of size, largest first.

I have tape jobs running which are configured to write "Backup jobs" (not repository or files) to tape daily once the disk reverse incremental are complete.
This is configured for Fulls, not incrementals. These have also been running without issue, until last night when the job failed at around 80% asking for another tape.

There have been no changes to the backup jobs, or VMs being backed up, and there has been no noticeable growth for the VMs being backed up.
When I investigated the space remaining on the tapes, there is well over 500GB free on each tape still however the jobs would not progress. The media pool used is configured for Parallel processing of jobs using 2 heads, as well as parallel processing of chains within a single job.

I can see no reason why this job has failed as there is ample capacity on the tapes, these jobs have not grown or changed, and the jobs have been completing without incident for several months now.

Can anyone shed any light?
Shestakov
Veteran
Posts: 7328
Liked: 781 times
Joined: May 21, 2014 11:03 am
Full Name: Nikita Shestakov
Location: Prague
Contact:

Re: Reverse Incremental tape jobs

Post by Shestakov »

Hello,
Could you provide the error message?
By the way, have you already contacted the support team?
Thanks!
veremin
Product Manager
Posts: 20270
Liked: 2252 times
Joined: Oct 26, 2012 3:28 pm
Full Name: Vladimir Eremin
Contact:

Re: Reverse Incremental tape jobs

Post by veremin »

Any chance tape drivers or device firmware has been updated recently?
owenw
Influencer
Posts: 19
Liked: never
Joined: Jun 15, 2016 8:32 am
Full Name: Infrastructure Team
Contact:

Re: Reverse Incremental tape jobs

Post by owenw »

Hi,

There is nothing that has changed in the config on this machine. No drivers, no windows or veeam updates etc.

The message from the tape job wasnt an error, just notification that the job required another tape.
03/02/2017 04:54:30 :: [VM] Insert a valid tape into the library HP MSL G3 Series 6.40 (SERVER), oldest retained tape: TAPENAME Wk2 Fri T1?, last written tape: TAPENAME Wk2 Thu T1.

This message was displayed after writing a total of 2.9T of data across 2x tapes.
This job writes 3.2T of data across 2 tapes on a daily basis leaving unused capacity of around 1.6T across the 2 tapes. There is absolutely no reason for this job to have asked for another tape.

I have not yet opened a ticket, as there is no "error" as such. At this point I was just looking for some input from the forum.
If this fails again I will log it as a ticket tho.

Cheers
veremin
Product Manager
Posts: 20270
Liked: 2252 times
Joined: Oct 26, 2012 3:28 pm
Full Name: Vladimir Eremin
Contact:

Re: Reverse Incremental tape jobs

Post by veremin »

Does the very same job ask for additional media pool or is it a second, third job? If the latter case, can you tell us what media set creation and retention settings are configured on the target media pool? Thanks.
owenw
Influencer
Posts: 19
Liked: never
Joined: Jun 15, 2016 8:32 am
Full Name: Infrastructure Team
Contact:

Re: Reverse Incremental tape jobs

Post by owenw »

This is a job which hasnt grown, which has been running for almost a year now, without issue.
This job asked for a 3rd tape when it usually completes successfully on 2 tapes with plenty of space remaining.

I re-ran this job without any changes as I could not see any reason for it to fail.
The job has now completed successfully.

Its so strange, as I have had a few explainable issues with Veeam backups to tape over the last 12 months. None of which I have found any reasonable explanation for.
This is compounded by the fact that when re-run, most of the time the jobs complete without issue.
veremin
Product Manager
Posts: 20270
Liked: 2252 times
Joined: Oct 26, 2012 3:28 pm
Full Name: Vladimir Eremin
Contact:

Re: Reverse Incremental tape jobs

Post by veremin »

In most cases such as free space collection process and similar we rely solely on information we get directly from device. Due to intermittent issues the wrong information might be returned by it.

If you see that the issue re-appears, kindly, open a ticket with our support team and provide its number here. Without tickets and logs attached hardly will we be able to find the root cause.

Thanks.
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 24 guests