Question on looking for an old file.

[theviking84]

I inherited a veeam setup that was using tapes, and I have not used tapes before. Here are the quick details and my questions.

The backup jobs are FILE to tape jobs. The files are the actual vbk/vib chains off of the veeam repository. When looking at restore options I can basically see the vbk/chains and their dates listed in the database as options to use, but there is no way to tell what actual files are on the virtual machines that were on these backups.

So, assuming that I know what tapes I would want to try to use, but its 30 days worth of tapes, and I don't know which tape a file is from, am I going to have to like literally restore to repository the vbk/vib chains first, and then mount those backups in veeam and search the files for all 30 tapes? requiring hours/days of restoring multi terabyte vbk/vib to disk first before I can even peer into them to see what files are on it?? Does the catalog help at all with knowing what actual vms/files are on the tape or will it still only show me that the tape has "a vbk and vib" etc?

Indexing in the enterprise manager was never set up either, but even in this case if it was, it would only be indexing the vbk/vib and not "down inside them the actual vms and files" right?

Thanks

[HannesK]

Hello,
if you need the files inside a VM, then indexing needs to be configured, yes. Enterprise Manager is for search, correct.

I'm also "too young for tape"... maybe you like to have a look on object storage. https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

Depending which Veeam version you use (Enterprise or higher), you might also want to check out "Backup-to-tape". That gives a better overview which VM is located where: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

Best regards,
Hannes

[theviking84]

Thank you Hannes,

I actually am going to move us to SOBRS with object storage and use gfs for long term. Tapes are a mess to me. They have their place but with immutability in s3 I don't see a need here.

Thank you!