Backup file bigger than tape size?

[evander]

I feel like this a stupid question and have tried googling but just cant find a definitive answer.

I'm setting up a new tape environment, Dell ML3 Tape Library with LTO9 tapes.
LTO 9 only has native ~18TB with up to 45TB compressed.
My understanding is because Veeam backups are already compressed we are basically looking at max 18TB (in reality prob only ~16,4TB) of usable space on each tape.

My question is: I have VMs that are many TBs in size and the resulting backups of these VMs, which is currently going to disk, has VBK files in excess of 18TB (after the Veeam default compression and dedup). Repos are ReFS and XFS which give great space savings but the repos are still over 30+TB
I also have NAS backup shares that are 35TB+ in size. Those repos are 60+TBs

I suspect the NAS backup to tape can be split between disks as they are not one big VBK file, but I dont believe its possible to split a VBK file so how does Veeam handle this to a 18TB tape?

Hoping its possible and I will now happily be educated on tape

Edit: All backups are per-machine mode

[Dima P.]

Hello evander,

Files larger that single tape media are split into chunks, so on file part is stored on the first tape, second on the second tape etc. Thank you!

[evander]

Thank you. I am still to run this big job so will test when I am able to.

Much appreciated.

[maruv]

Tape backup can be tricky when dealing with large files that exceed the tape capacity. From what I’ve read, Veeam has some options to handle this scenario, such as splitting the VBK file across multiple tapes, using the files to tape job with the .vbk file mask, or importing the VBK file from tape to disk. However, I’m not sure how well these options work in practice and what are the pros and cons of each one. Maybe someone with more experience can share their insights and best practices. I hope you find a solution that works for you and your tape environment. Good luck!

[maruv]

I feel like this a stupid question and have tried googling but just cant find a definitive answer.

I'm setting up a new tape environment, Dell ML3 Tape Library with LTO9 tapes.
LTO 9 only has native ~18TB with up to 45TB compressed.
My understanding is because Veeam backups are already compressed we are basically looking at max 18TB (in reality prob only ~16,4TB) of usable space on each tape.

My question is: I have VMs that are many TBs in size and the resulting backups of these VMs, which is currently going to disk, has VBK files in excess of 18TB (after the Veeam default compression and dedup). Repos are ReFS and XFS which give great space savings but the repos are still over 30+TB
I also have NAS backup shares that are 35TB+ in size. Those repos are 60+TBs

I suspect the NAS backup to tape can be split between disks as they are not one big VBK file, but I dont believe its possible to split a VBK file so how does Veeam handle this to a 18TB tape?
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Hoping its possible and I will now happily be educated on tape

Edit: All backups are per-machine mode

I think you have a valid question and it’s not stupid at all. I have faced a similar issue with my tape backups and I found a solution that works for me. You can use the split file option in Veeam Backup & Replication to split your large VBK files into smaller chunks that fit on your tapes1. This way, you can backup your VMs and NAS shares without worrying about the tape capacity. You can also use the Veeam Extract Utility to restore your split VBK files from tapes2. I hope this helps you and good luck with your tape environment.