Installing Physical Linux LTO Tape Server

[david.brunner]

Hello Forum-members,

I did a lot of research, but did not find a solution I can work with.

Goal: Using an old HP Proliant ML310e Gen8 Server (no windows licence) with local connectet LTO4 Ultrim 1760 tape drive as remote repository, which the Veeam B&R v11 Server can access via iSCSI.

Intention: I wanted to set up Quadstor VTL (like this https://www.veeam.com/blog/how-to-creat ... d-why.html ) to use it.
But this creates a virtual tape drive, while I want to use the existing, physical one. Unfortunately the emulation does not start.

Is there some setup (with Cent OS, Debian or any other GNU/Linux) I could follow up with?
Shouldn´t OS+ driver + enabling iSCSI target be sufficient?

Thanks in advance!
best regards,
David

[Egor Yakovlev]

Veeam Tape Server role must be on a Windows-based machine.
it does not have to be Windows Server OS family, so even generic Windows 10 will do the trick.

/Thanks!

[david.brunner]

Thank you. But still, Windows Client OS requires a licence (and steady updates + reboot), so I would have preferred it to be a linux machine.

so Quadstor VTL might do the trick. Is there anyone who can tell me if it can passthrough a local connected, physical tape drive as VTL ?
No documentation I found did help me.

Maybe there are more people out there who could use this information...

[Dima P.]

David,

We do support passthrough connection for tape devices (but please keep in mind that if there is a hardware-related issue, Veeam Support will not provide help to solve it. This functionality is vendor-supported). By the way, you can install Tape server role on the Veeam B&R machine and connect tape device to it - that should not consume additional Windows license.

[david.brunner]

Hello Dima,
thanks for the reply.
Can I get more information on this?
So I can passthrough the LTO-4 Tape from an linux server to the B&R machine, which has the tape server role?

I do have a Windows Server 2016 with licensed B&R version 11 and local connected LTO8 Tape drive, which can do all server roles remotely.
The aim is to make an additional, seperated hardware lto drive server. So i can not physically attach it to the B&R machine.

[soncscy]

>So I can passthrough the LTO-4 Tape from an linux server to the B&R machine

As I read it, be very careful in your understanding here -- you __can__ do this (as in physically you can), but you will struggle to get support on it. At least Veeam is being open that they don't support it.

Is there any way for you to present your device via iscsi and go over network? This is really the best possible situation you can have here.

If you really cannot provision a real tape server, I would go the VTL route; quatstor lets you tie the VTL to the physical server (which can be Linux based): https://www.quadstor.com/physical-libra ... ement.html

Starwind has something similar where the software sits on the server, but I'm not sure that it has a linux option.

But really, don't do passthrough -- you will regret it the exact second you get a problem and suddenly no one wants to touch your environment.

[Dima P.]

I do have a Windows Server 2016 with licensed B&R version 11 and local connected LTO8 Tape drive, which can do all server roles remotely.

Mind me asking what is your backup repository? If that's a Windows server machine with bunch of disks - i'd recommend to install the tape server role from VBR directly to such repository and connect tape drive to it. That would eliminate the possible network bottleneck between the repo and tape server.

Is there any way for you to present your device via iscsi and go over network? This is really the best possible situation you can have here.

Agree.

[david.brunner]

Thanks for your answers.
The main goal was to use this server and built-in LTO-4 Tape drive over Linux and have it located in a different server room, only connected via network.
I have zero doubts having it running on long-term as such. With Windows, it is steady maintenance.

I *could* connect the lto-4 drive to the main B&R backup server (it is the only Veeam server I have), but then it would all be in the same server room.

So either I can get it up and running with quadstor VTL now, or I have to give it up and use Windows OS for it (with automatic updates + reboot and hardened settings)

Since the VTL does not work like expected till now, I will have to go with a Windows 10 setup.
I hope, Veeam will support linux as server in future.

[Dima P.]

Hello David,

Thanks for honest feedback. We are investigating the possibility to deploy tape server role on Linux for next versions. Cheers!

[david.brunner]

Thanks!

It seems my requirement does not match the purpose of quadstor VTL. Seems like a great software, but I will have to revert to windows for my purpose.

Hopefully it will be different in the future

Cheers!

[Regnor]

If taken this quote from another topic because it better fits here(post435374.html#p435374)

Can confirm - Linux as a Tape server is planned for V12.

Probably it's too early to ask for any details, but will it be possible to combine the tape server with the hardened Linux repository on the same box?

[Gostev]

No.

[Regnor]

Well that's sad; especially for SMBs this would have been great, as those customers in general have a single backupserver which does repository, tape server, etc.Two physical servers are most of the time out of Budget. So you have to decide between hardened Linux repository or tape.

[Gostev]

Then it would no longer be "hardened"...

[Regnor]

Well it depends on the definition
It's only an additional Veeam service and port, which can be just as secure or insecure as the one from the hardened linux repository.

Ok, thinking about it the service will probably need more permissions (root?) to access the tape device?

[Gostev]

You're spot on. The big part of hardened repository paradigm is that the only service running under root privileges implements like 3-4 small functions only. Which makes ensuring that such a service is air-tight secure actually doable. Compare that with trying to secure a huge amount of code that implements tape devices interaction...

[Regnor]

Ok, then it makes sense to keep both roles separated. Thanks Anton.