Backup direct to tape

[stewsie]

Hi

Sorry if this has been asked before by someone else.

I haven't used endpoint agents yet but need to know if it is possible to backup direct to tape rather than disk? I am looking at backing up 7 physical Windows servers ideally direct to tape.

Thanks

Paul

[Egor Yakovlev]

The only way to send endpoint data directly to tape would be File to Tape job of Veeam Backup and Replication.
If you can saturate 1 Full backup on disk, then Veeam Agent for Windows backup + Backup to Tape is a preferred scenario.
/Thanks!

[stewsie]

Thanks for the info. I was expecting to be able to backup directly to tape using the agent. Oh well back to the drawing board and look at alternatives.

Thanks

[Egor Yakovlev]

For direct tape backups from agent, imagine your 7 servers are trying to write data to the tape:
- first says: "I want to write to Tape A85DD12",
- another says: "hey, I need different cartridge cartridge with my last backup!"
- 3rd says: "Last free size check said 95% full, so lets erase currently plugged in tape!"...
There must be a "controller" server(Veeam Backup and Replication Tape Server) who will become a single point of access for the tape, otherwise problems are imminent. Not to mention each one of them should have direct access to the tape device, supported drivers installed...
/Cheers!

[stewsie]

Weird as this is something I was able to do more than 10 years ago using another production to backup physical servers. Backups were managed by the backup software and all backups using agents wrote directly to tape managed by the backup software. The backup software knew which tape and drive was used for the relevant backup job.

What I was asking as far as Veeam is concerned and writing directly to tape still meant that the jobs would be managed by Veeam B&R but instead of writing to disk it would write directly to tape managed by the Veeam B&R server.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Well that is exactly how File to Tape job works. You don't even need a Veeam Agent on your servers for it, as we will put a lightweight transporter instead and pull files from Physical Machine -> Tape Server directly with no intermediate disk based storage. That is 100% free feature available in all editions!