AWS VTL - Setup Advice

[infused]

Hi Guys.

I have the AWS Virtual Tape Library working. Just wondering about best practice to avoid the excessive cost.

I'm mainly looking at:

* Tape size in order to lessen the amount of data retrieved when pulling tapes back
* How to use the libraries efficiently in order to archive tapes properly

Do any of you have examples of how this is configured? I am just looking to put 12 months worth for each media setup. I'd ideally like to push each tape to archive after each monthly run in order to get the glacier prices. We don't tend to restore much from older backups, so that isn't a concern.

[Dima P.]

Hi Hayden,

What type of tapes jobs are you going to use with AWS VTL (file to tape or backup to tape) ? Thanks.

[infused]

Backup to tape

[Dima P.]

Check that compression and deduplication is being used at the primary backup job before writing data to tape.

If you are writing fulls and incrementals do not forget to close the media set / perform tape export before new full is written to tape. This would limit the tape media required to perform a restore, so you would download less from AWS.

If you are writing full backups only – use create media set per backup session. As a result, you will have a full per tape (again savings during download from AWS).

[infused]

Good advice. Thank you.

Where is the 'create media sets per backup session' option available from?

[Dima P.]

For simple media pools - Specify Media Set Options

For GFS media pools uncheck 'Append backup files to incomplete tapes' - Specify Advanced Media Set Options