Discussions related to exporting backups to tape and backing up directly to tape.
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EzE
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Move existing GFS backups to tape

Post by EzE »

Is there a way to move my existing GFS restore points to tape and allow for per-VM restore?

Details:
We have been backing up to a local repo with a bunch of GFS .VBK points (monthly, quarterly, yearly). This repo has windows dedup enabled, which has save a tremendous amount of space across the GFS VBK's. However, for various reasons, I want to recreate our GFS copy jobs and start all new chains. Doing so will start new backup chains, and we do not have disk space to keep all of the original VBK's (and we need them for compliance reasons). I have installed an LTO-7 tape library to move most of our GFS points off the repository. This will allow a rebuild, and also serve as an air gap in our backup strategy going forward.

Now I'm new when it comes to tape jobs, and I'm struggling to find the right approach. I was able to create a file job and back up a specified VBK file to a tape. As a test, I wanted to restore a VM from the VBK back to disk to verify data integrity. However, it appears VEEAM is only aware of the VBK file, and cannot "see inside" to restore an individual VM. Instead, it only allows me to recover the entire 3.5TB VBK file which is a long process and obviously requires a lot of disk space. This is not what I had in mind. Is there a better way to move these GFS points to tape?

Thanks in advance.
csydas
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Re: Move existing GFS backups to tape

Post by csydas »

Hey Eric,

Are you not able to do the Direct to Infrastructure restore? https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... tml?ver=95

If I get it correctly, you should be able to pick the proper VM and then the multipass magic should move just the required data to the infrastructure.

Note though that the Restore Wizard and UG recommend using a staging disk first if you want to get a VM from a large single backup. (i.e. many VMs in the sam backup)

That being said though might be an ideal situation for one of those cheap 8TB drives as a staging disk.
EzE
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Re: Move existing GFS backups to tape

Post by EzE »

There are no VM's available in the "full VM restore" wizard so I cannot perform a direct to infrastructure restore. I have added a few VBK files to the tape, but I can only restore the entire VBK, not an individual VM.

I tested a "backup to tape" job and after cataloging the tape, I am able to restore individual VM's. So that being said, it appears I need to run "backup to tape" jobs for my GFS archives. Is this even possible? It seems the "backup to tape" job is designed to take backup jobs to archive, not backup copy jobs. If I create a "backup to tape" job, I'm given 2 options for the existing backup chains - either take just the most recent, or all of them. Problem is that I do not want to include the Weekly and Monthy's to tape, just the Quarterly and Yearly.
foggy
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Re: Move existing GFS backups to tape

Post by foggy »

Backup copy job is not a problem, however, there's no ability to select only quarterly and yearly backups with this type of jobs.
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