Backup Copy to Tape?

[enoch]

Hi all,

We're looking to buy a Tape Library for Veeam for one of our offsite Backup Copies.

Can we create a Backup Copy Job where the target can be a Tape Library?

[Dima P.]

Hi Peter.

You cannot configure tape device as a target for your backup copy jobs but you can create tape jobs with backup copy as a source. Please take a look at tape section in Help Center and let us know if have any questions. Thank you.

[enoch]

Thanks

[theedge]

So a backup copy on a tape library could be the source of a remote tape library's backup copy job? I cannot seem to find more detail on this in the tape section...

I have customers who would like to copy a backup to a local tape library and a remote tape library simultaneously... a tape stretch cluster of sorts. This could be an async copy to the second offsite library with the local tape backup as a source or the software writing to both libraries at once.

[Dima P.]

Jim,

Yes, you can select backup copy jobs as a source for backup to tape jobs (it's fully supported). In backup to tape job wizard select Add > Backup jobs and pick desired Backup copy job. Cheers!

[pkelly_sts]

Bear in mind that if you're writing to a tape library over a WAN, then unless it's super-fast you might not reach the minimum streaming speeds required of your drive to avoid "shoe-shining". The faster the tape drive (e.g. LTO-7/8) the higher the minimum streaming speed.

If you don't meet the minimum streaming speed then the tape will be constantly pausing, rewinding, writing etc. hence the name "shoe-shining".

[skrause]

Bear in mind that if you're writing to a tape library over a WAN, then unless it's super-fast you might not reach the minimum streaming speeds required of your drive to avoid "shoe-shining". The faster the tape drive (e.g. LTO-7/8) the higher the minimum streaming speed.

If you don't meet the minimum streaming speed then the tape will be constantly pausing, rewinding, writing etc. hence the name "shoe-shining".

You also will likely have job failures when any type of network blip happens during the stream it causes the job to fail.

You really need to have the disk repository that is the source for your tape jobs be in the same local network as your tape server. (Or have your repository server also be your tape server).

[pkelly_sts]

Indeed. On our sites we do:
Site 1 - Local backup to disk, copy to local tape, backup copy to site 2, backup site 2 copy to site 2 tape
Site 2 - Local backup to disk, copy to local tape, backup copy to site 1, backup site 1 copy to site 1 tape

I actually have an additional copy with high number of restore point retention (currently 120) on each site as well, just to save having to go to tape for little recent restores, but this job doesn't go to tape also and if I lost it I'd simply start it again.

[theedge]

Bear in mind that if you're writing to a tape library over a WAN, then unless it's super-fast you might not reach the minimum streaming speeds required of your drive to avoid "shoe-shining". The faster the tape drive (e.g. LTO-7/8) the higher the minimum streaming speed.

If you don't meet the minimum streaming speed then the tape will be constantly pausing, rewinding, writing etc. hence the name "shoe-shining".

We manufacture an accelerated hardware protocol bridge that converts SAS tape (or SSD/HDD) devices to 40Gb Ethernet and use iSER and hardware accelerated iSCSI (not a TOE) to move the data from point A to point B - so speed and latency are not an issue (added latency of only <2us and speeds of 6000 MB/s) We can connect up to 16 drives behind the bridge. We tested Veeam backup with iSER and had very good results for backup and replication. The copy jobs to a second site are of interest to our customers.