Year End backups to tape

[bhagen]

Been struggling with figuring out the best way to do tape jobs, but in the mean time, I really need to get copies of my critical VMs (vmware) to tape as a "yearly backup".

I've already created backup copy jobs of the critical VMs, and those jobs are sitting on their own NAS...and I've disabled the jobs so they don't keep updating.

Now, what's the best way to copy those backup copies to tape, once, so I can put those tapes in a locked vault and leave them there for 5 years? Of course I'll have them on tape because I'll potentially need to grab a file or folder from one of them in 3 years (or 3 months).

AT this point, I'm not interested in GFS, or anything "fancy"...just need to get those VMs on tape and be able to restore from them if necessary.

[Dima P.]

Hi bhagen,

Create a standard media pool, add desired amount of tape media and run backup to tape job with the backup copy as a source. That could be a one-time job run, so once done you can delete the job. Media pool should remain for tracking purposes. Makes sense?

[bhagen]

Ah...yes, that makes sense and looks like it's going to work; trying it now!

How do I recover a file or folder after doing it this way? Do I have to restore an entire backup job to "somewhere", import it into Veeam, then use FLIR to restore from there? Or can I restore directly from tape?

[bhagen]

Well, this isn't working, and I don't understand.

As mentioned, I have 11 backup copy jobs, complete.

I have 10 tapes in a standard media pool.

I've created a Backup to Tape job, and have selected all 11 backup copy jobs as the source.

The Backup to tape job only sees a single one of the 11 backup copy jobs as having something to backup; for the other 10 jobs it says "Source backup files detected. VBK: 0, VBK map: 0, VIB: 0"

Yet, there are several .vbk files for each job on the repository.

Help?

[kentsu]

This something I am struggling with as well. As far as I see you are screwed. You want a year end full backup to tape and now it is March. If your backup has a full backup on 31.Dec.2018 and you run a Tape job in March which has a schedule to write a full backup on 31.Dec the job will trigger on 31.Dec.2019.
If someone knows of a way to accomplish a backup to tape job from a retrospect restore point, supported or not-supported method, please let me know.

[bhagen]

As I mentioned, I'd run backup copy jobs for each of my jobs at year end (well, close enough for our purposes).

Out of frustration, I finally just created a 2019 EOY file to tape job, and added the folder (from my backup NAS) that contained all those backup copy jobs.

That worked for us; we now have all those backup copy jobs from year end on tape, and if I need to restore any of those VMs or files, I'll have to (I think) restore the entire backup copy job that contains the VM I need, import that backup copy job into Veeam, and *then* restore the VM or file(s) I need.

And as Dima suggested, I just deleted all the jobs from the Veeam console so I don't have to look at them any more.

[Dima P.]

bhagen,

I sorry for keeping silence.

That worked for us; we now have all those backup copy jobs from year end on tape, and if I need to restore any of those VMs or files, I'll have to (I think) restore the entire backup copy job that contains the VM I need, import that backup copy job into Veeam, and *then* restore the VM or file(s) I need.

Unfortunately that's true, as file to tapes do not provide integration with backup files. With backup to tape jobs you could use direct VM restore from tape bypassing the staging repository. That's said I am glad to hear that you are up and running!