Archive to tape from Azure

[martijn123]

Current setup is that we make backups and offload them to the Azure blob storage, but we would like to move old backups (from older then 2 years) to cold tape storage in house. So we have configured an tape machine that Veeam can access. But how do we setup that everything older then x time is automatically archived to tape?
We would like to have an similare solution as that the archive tier has but then save the data locally on tape. As far as the documentions says you can only configure: Amazon S3 Glacier,
S3 compatible object storage with data archiving, Microsoft Azure Archive Storage. and not an local storange location as archive tier.

Can someone help me in the right direction how to set this up properly? so that we don't have to manually add backs to our tape machine and deleted them manual from the Azure blob storage.

[Mildur]

Hi Martijn

I assume you are using an on-prem performance and Azure Blob capacity tier?

With our Backup to Tape job, you cannot select "2 year old backups" to be written to tape. And we don't pull backups from Capacity Tier with such job, only from the performance tier. Backup To Tape jobs always write the most recent restore points to Tape.

A File To Tape job would be able to write these backups to tape, by selecting the 2 year old backup files. The backups have to be first stored as backup files on performance tier or any other non-object storage repository. You can
export or download them to a local disk. Then use a File To Tape job to write it to the tape.

Please note, downloading backups from Azure Blob to the performance tier may be very expensive. Microsoft will bill you for all the API calls and egress traffic of your backup files. It's better to write Tapes directly from your primary backup on performance tier or standalone on-premise backup repositories.

If you have backups on Azure Blob, then I recommend to send them to immutable Azure Archive Storage for long term retention requirements. This allows you to keep GFS backups for a long time on cheaper storage.

so that we don't have to manually add backs to our tape machine and deleted them manual from the Azure blob storage.

How are you "deleting manually from Azure Blob? Manual interaction outside of VBR console on Azure Blob is not supported.

Can you please share the main use case why are you writing backups to tapes? Compliance reasons? Or to remove backups from Azure Blob to save money?

Best,
Fabian

[david.domask]

Just to add to Fabian's statement, with Download from Capacity Tier, a normal Backup to Tape job will be able to back up such backups. However, if you selected "Latest Chain Only when adding the source job to the tape job AND the backups you want to backup are from an older, inactive, chain, then the tape job will not see the restore points as viable for backing up.

To overcome this, simply remove the source job and re-add it, you will be prompted as shown in the link above; select All chains, and then the job will be able to capture the older backups without re-copying backups already on tape.

[martijn123]

We would like to do it this way to save costs but still have always an backup in Azure for emergency cases.

If it is possible with an tape job to only send GFS yearly backups from the performance tier? This way we would be able to lower the Azure retention on capacity tier.

[david.domask]

Hi Martjin,

At this time, not directly. By downloading the points and then using a File to Tape job, you can tape-out specific backups to tape, but for regular Backup to Tape jobs (with GFS or not), they use a different mechanism to ensure the backups are copied to tape in a consistent way.

So consider downloading the backups, then using a File to Tape job to perform the tape-out.