tape clone possible?

[Dima P.]

A remark to the workaround of restoring and re-saving to copy: We had big discussions with our auditors on that topic, regarding the fact, that you might alter data before re-saving.

So in your case it's required to copy data from one tape to another on a binary level to ensure that content was not modified? Thanks!

[SysSadMan]

+1 for the feature request

I too would like to see the tape close feature, I need to clone several tapes and hate the fact that I have to restore to a drive than create a new to tape job.

[roger.hunter]

I am wanting a feature adding to Veeam Backup and Replication. I would like to be able to copy 1 tape to another tape but according to Veeam Support that isn't available. They told me to open a feature request on here. Does anyone else want this feature. Thanks

I definitely want (and need) to have this capability.

[asc4]

So in your case it's required to copy data from one tape to another on a binary level to ensure that content was not modified? Thanks!

Hi Dima,
yes, that is the requirement and that is the way we were usesd from our IBM i (aka OS/400) systems.

The tape copy should retrieve the data stream from the tape driver while reading the old tape and forward it without modification to the tape driver writing the new tape. So operations done by the drive itself (compact, encryption) might alter the bits on the tape itself, but from view of a plain tape dump data should be identical.

Regards Axel

[lalaith75]

+1 for Tape2Tape Clone from me, too.

[gudmundo]

+1 for Tape2Tape Clone

[thomas.biesmans]

+1 for Tape2Tape Clone

[Dima P.]

Hello folks,

Mind me asking to share your personal use case which can be addressed with tape copy functionality. We are eager to hear how you plan to use such functionality:

- As a one-time migration to move data from old generation tapes. With this scenario please share if you want to keep old media or it should be removed from Veeam B&R catalog immediately? What export options you would expect from such operation (i.e. export everything when the copy operation is completed / export only old tapes)
- To create a secondary tape during backup process. If you are interested in such option - should the secondary tape be recorded together with the primary or you see it as the post backup process (similar to backup copy)

Thanks for your input!

[roshan.saldanha]

Dear Veeam Product Manager,
Tape to tape copy is essential feature of an "large enterprise backup application", where there are compliance requirements of keeping 2 offsite copies for banking/financial sectors specially.
We as a "Hosting Service provider", currently have a challenge with Veeam with similar requirement, and surprised to see this was requested by many members since 2017, but was not taken seriously.
Right now we are using Commvault for this requirement. Hope Veeam development team will address this "feature request" soon.
Best regards,
Roshan Saldanha

[Dima P.]

Hello and welcome to the community Roshan.

We treat this feature as very demanded and are in research state. Thanks for your honest feedback!

[rayc@567.net.au]

Here's another vote for Tape Cloning. Required here for business governance reasons in a M&A process.

[Dima P.]

Hello Ray,

Thanks for the feedback! Mind me asking, if you need to create a secondary tape copy right after the primary tape job, or it would be a one-time operation for all your tapes? Cheers!

[soncscy]

Just some feedback from clients I have that are heavily invested in tape:

They want to be able to feed smaller, older generation tapes into newer generation tapes in parallel. That is, think like migrating a bunch of old LTO4 tapes into a single LTO8 tape, and they'd really like it to be fast

I hope Veeam can deliver a vision like this

[Dima P.]

Thanks for the feedback Harvey! It is planned for next major version.

[vmtech123]

Thanks for the update. This is going to be a huge help going forward with the extreme retention I require. Data keeps grown but I can not delete it. Eventually I get stuck with tapes 3 or 4 generations old when I upgrade and have to restore / backup in chunks as I don't have that much storage to stage it all and it is time consuming and tedious.

I hope that you have the ability to copy directly from tape to tape, or at least can control how much is staged on disk. if we assume I have a library with 8 LTO6 or LTO7 drives being replaced with an 8 drive LTO9 or LTO10, I would want to read from all 8 drives at once on the older unit. I would prefer not to end up with 50TB staged on my SAN before flushing it to tape or having the ability to limit it to a specific amount if at all possible.

[Dima P.]

Hello Scott,

Our plan is to stream data from one drive to another, so tape copy operation wont require disk capacity. Cheers!

[vmtech123]

Even better!!!

[skrause]

Will we be able to concatenate multiple tapes together onto one newer, higher capacity tape?

Example: we just switched from LTO5 to LTO7 and having the ability to put the contents of two LTO5 Tapes onto one LTO7 would be nice.

[Dima P.]

Yup, that's planned.

[tehinternet]

I also wish this feature was possible.

Moving from NetBackup to Veeam, one thing we're missing is the ability to configure a job to write the job two separate to two separate tapes in two separate tape jobs simultaneously. To me that's actually better than having to clone a tape because I can just two two of the same tape in one job.

[StephanF]

Beside tape2tape direct copy it would be also good to have tape2disk2tape with a disk storage in between. This would make it possible to copy tapes if you have only one drive available.

Additionally an option "just read" (with out really copying) would make sense for check if a tape is still readable without wasting disk space for a real restore.

[Dima P.]

Hi Stephan,

Beside tape2tape direct copy it would be also good to have tape2disk2tape with a disk storage in between. This would make it possible to copy tapes if you have only one drive available.

You can do it today by restoring backups to a repository and then writing them back to tape via file to tape job.

Additionally an option "just read" (with out really copying) would make sense for check if a tape is still readable without wasting disk space for a real restore.

That's planned

[StephanF]

You can do it today by restoring backups to a repository and then writing them back to tape via file to tape job.

Yes, but this way using file to tape job I will loose the "connection information" to the original chain. It's then only a VBK on a tape with no detailed information where ist is coming from. It should be good not to loose the benefits of the orinial backup to tape job.

[jr.maycock]

Hello Dima. I'd like to add my voice, for whatever it's worth, to the votes for being able to directly duplicate tape contents within Veeam. I have a few use cases in mind, at least one of which hasn't yet been mentioned in this thread. The key framing concept is that we use GFS tape media pools for Tenant to Tape backups. Maintaining continuity within the metadata / configuration database so Veeam can relate files on tapes directly to source jobs during a future restore is paramount, all the cloning use cases share a common need to not allow restore points to become disassociated from the parent hierarchy of backups.

Use case 1 - duplicate high-value data to multiple offline media sets for redundancy / data survivability. This should be done as a post-backup process and should be able to be invoked either manually through the VBR UI for a one-time copy or repeatedly by policy on a tape job. Veeam should keep track of each instance of the restore points in the config database when those restore points now reside on multiple tapes and automatically select from any readable media during a restore operation which targets a specific restore point to be written back to disk. Put another way, Veeam will need awareness of whether any of the media sets containing the files for a restore point are still readable in any connected tape library and should make that information visible to a user in the restore job UI, then automatically use a readable copy of the restore point even if other copies are exported from the library / were lost to failed media / were otherwise unavailable.

Use case 2 - migrate offline backups to updated generations of media, say LTO5 to LTO8. This should be doable as a one-time manual action and should update the Veeam catalog of backups to be aware of the presence of files for restore points on the new media. Ideally the user should be able to choose whether the old media is removed or retained in the Veeam catalog, but if that makes implementing the feature too difficult on dev teams, then the correct zero-choice behavior would be to remove the old media after migration and only retain knowledge of the restore points on new media.

Use case 3 - salvaging data from a tape that has experienced media health warnings but not yet outright failed / not yet been forced into the Retired media pool. This is the net new use case I want to mention, though the technical implementation requirements would likely match the manual execution variant of use case 1. In the status quo if a tape gives a media health warning I would be forced to write the file contents of that tape out to disk and then copy them over to a second tape with a File to Tape job. While that could prevent the data from being lost, it also permanently breaks the association of those backup files to the source job and the rest of the contents of the GFS media pool.

Getting this feature implemented in Veeam in as immediate of a release as possible would rank as either my #1 or #2 priority ahead of all others. Its only competition would be VCC repository integration as a target for Veeam Backup for Azure / AWS / File Shares.

[Dima P.]

Hello jr.maycock,

Thank you for sharing the detailed feedback - we are working on this functionality and looks like all of the cases will be addressed.

Mind me asking if you are using tenant to tape functionality to tape our your clients data via Cloud Connect server or mainly tape devices are connected to a regular Veeam B&R servers? Thanks!

[jr.maycock]

Happy to answer. Tenant to Tape is used by us in context of a Cloud Connect server for taping out client data.

[Dima P.]

Thank you! Any chance you ship those tapes to the client or you keep the media within the Cloud Connect site?

[jr.maycock]

Dmitry, in our case we always keep the media at the cloud connect site. When we physically provide data back to clients via delivery services it is accomplished by using a traveling disk-based repository populated with content written from any relevant source such as tape, not by sending tape media. No clients we interact with own hardware capable of reading tape media, and we maintain better operational security by having very strict chain of custody maintained with the lifecycle of the tapes never departing our business campus.

Hope these clarifications are useful.

[Dima P.]

Understood, thanks a lot for all the comments. Cheers!

[javichumellamo]

Thanks for the feedback Harvey! It is planned for next major version.

Hi Dmitri,
Does it mean V11 or what?

Thanks
Javier