Integrating a Second Tape Library with Veeam B&R 12.1: Seeking Insights and Experiences

[DataDefender]

Good evening, gents. I am currently running Veeam B&R 12.1, but I have not yet started storing backups on tape. I am considering making a change in this regard.

On the same machine, we are using another backup software that writes backups to tapes. According to the documentation, sharing a tape library between Veeam and third-party software is not supported. However, I am wondering about the feasibility of adding a second tape library (a physical one, not just partitioning the existing one). Are there any potential (un)expected problems I might encounter with this setup? I have searched this forums but did not find an answer.

For context, the other backup software we're using allows for such a configuration, as it can ignore specific tape devices/libraries in its settings.

Thanks in advance,
DD

[HannesK]

Hello,
first: installing two backup software products on the same server is a bad idea in general. I would not want to troubleshoot that if something goes wrong

I recommend checking out https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

Do not install any 3rd party tape-recording software or software components on Veeam tape server.

consider that Veeam Backup & Replication by default will periodically lock the drive to perform rescan, preventing other software from recording.

You can try working with "maintenance mode", but I would not do it.

Best regards,
Hannes

[bct44]

Very Bad idea without partionning. Your tape robot will goes crazy to have different order from many backup software. It could works if they are not working and target same tapes but you will encountered some horrible issue with time.

[DataDefender]

I believe there's been a misunderstanding. I don't intend to share one tape library between two tape recording software applications. Instead, I want each software application to have access to its own dedicated hardware library (I have two hardware libraries here). The other software I am using does support this scenario.
I considered installing the Veeam tape server on another machine, but the limitation is the 1 Gbit network connection, which would become a bottleneck.
But from what I am reading here this sounds like unusual and unsupported. Maybe a feature request?

[HannesK]

it's a feature request, but unlikely to be implemented because it's a very rare use-case.

Just curious: what's the reason of having a second backup software additionally to Veeam?

[DataDefender]

Veeam Tape backup has some limitations in regard to single item restore from tape. You need to restore the whole backup chain to retrieve a single file from a volume backup, even if that file is only 10MB in size.
I know there have been improvements over the years to Veeam's file-to-tape in this regard, but from what I am reading, it's not really handling well with lots of data and a large number of files.
Also, with the new license model, you need one VUL per 500GB of file to tape. This will get very expensive quickly.

[HannesK]

fair points. The design goal from our side is that everything that needs file restore is stored on disk media in general. Restoring one 10MB file might be okay-ish from tape. But restoring 1 million 1MB files from tape does not sound like many customers would want to do that.

We got the request you have in the beginning quite often. But almost no new requests since some years. Probably because disk / cloud became more affordable so tape is only used for "another copy" and not for regular file restores.

[DataDefender]

Yeah, I know that is kind of a special use case and Veeam is not designed for that, but that's no problem. I just wanted to take advantage of Veeam's tape capabilities with all of our VM backups and, in parallel, keep the old 'file archiving' software running on a separate tape library. I will go ahead and try with the suggested 'maintenance mode' for the 2nd library in the following weeks. Maybe it will just work for us.