Backup files from NAS to Tape

[JK2015]

Hi,

I would like to know if my approch is the right/only one. As the topic says, I try to backup files (which reside on our NAS) directly to Tape. What I did is the following ...
1. Create media pool.
2. Create new Job "Files to Tape"
2a. Under "Files and Folders" I selected "This server" (the Veaam VM Server) and under "Add" I navigated to the network share and added it to the job (and chose the credentials).
2b. Selected media pool.
2c. Finish job.

Since another job is running at the moment, I cannot start this backup job. As mentioned above, is this the right way to "misuse" Veeam for this task?

Regards,

Jo

[veremin]

Can you tell me how many files currently reside on the given share? And what is the file average size?

[JK2015]

There are 4 shares with a total of about 3TB of data. The number of files is about 800.000 to 850.000.

[veremin]

The given approach looks good. Also, with enhancements and improvements introduced to it, files to tape job should work OK with the described shares.

Anyway, it might be worth testing the job performance first and seeing whether it meets your expectations. Don't forget that tape jobs were designed to work primarily with backup files at first place.

Thanks.

[JK2015]

Ok, thanks a lot.

Performance is atm not very important. Current idea is that this is a one-time job so that the files are saved to tape and hopefully will never be touched again.

[veremin]

Got it. If it should always be a full copy of those shares, then, uncheck "run incremental backup" option in the job settings. Otherwise, leave it ticked. Thanks.

[Dima P.]

JK2015,

If it’s a onetime operation you can leave such file to tape job “unscheduled” and run it on demand only. Wanted to ask you to share the performance results anyway, as I believe, there is still room for further improvements. Thank you in advance.

[JK2015]

Hello again,

I may have a little problem. I started the backup and at 73% it suddenly stopped. As it seems, the harddisc of our Veeam VM is full (aka 0 bytes of emtpy space). I stopped the backup and rebooted the machine but I still only have about 2GB of free space. I thought "no problem, I'll just extend the harddisc, but this only works without any snapshots. ATM I have about 5 or 6 snapshots with the comment "created by Veeam, please do not delete".
Question now is:
- How do I get more space?
- Can I delete the snapshots manully? (the other more important backup jobs started and then stopped)

Regards,

Jo

[veremin]

I'm slightly confused. You were talking about backup of share directly to tapes which shouldn't take space on VB&R server. Or there was another task (backup job ) performed at the same time? Do the said snapshots exist on backup server VM?

[JK2015]

Sorry for the delay. I had to wait for jobs to finish first.

There are 2 things I see atm.

1. Is it possible that the files to tape backup took up a lot of space, because during that job, the harddisc filled up until the last Byte, which caused this and the other "normal" backup jobs to stop.
2. Regarding those snapshots, I found a knowledge base article (http://www.veeam.com/kb1790) that described my problem. After I deleted them (while no job was running), I could expand the harddisc of the vm. Though I think this is problem is solved (and had nothing to do with the file to tape job).

Regards,

Jo

[veremin]

Is it possible that the files to tape backup took up a lot of space, because during that job, the harddisc filled up until the last Byte, which caused this and the other "normal" backup jobs to stop.

Nope, files to tape job is a direct archiving of files to tapes. That doesn't take any space either on a backup or repository server. The reason must be different, you may want to contact support team to understand which particular operation result in drive filling.

Thanks.

[gdavid16]

JK2015, you seem to be doing something i am also looking to do. http://forums.veeam.com/veeam-backup-re ... 29961.html
I do have a significant amount of data to backup. I am curious how the performance is working out for you?

Does it backup file by file or do you see it pulling multiple streams? do you have this running over 10GB?

thanks. Gd.

[JK2015]

JK2015, you seem to be doing something i am also looking to do. http://forums.veeam.com/veeam-backup-re ... 29961.html
I do have a significant amount of data to backup. I am curious how the performance is working out for you?

Does it backup file by file or do you see it pulling multiple streams? do you have this running over 10GB?

thanks. Gd.

Hi Gd,

at the moment I had to push this back. I'm trying to backup about 3TB of data. I think I started it on Friday and on Monday I had saw that it was about 73% finished, when it stopped working because of full harddisc. I just looked up the statistics for the job. It copied 2TB in 76 hours, which if I made the calculations right makes about 8MB/s. Not very fast I think.

Regards,

Jo

[gdavid16]

Hi Jo,

take a look at my post, sounds like some of your problems will be resolved in v9, based on the post from Gostev.
i will also have to test this. and see how it goes. right now we are still setting up our block based backups and not worrying about the files.

I will let you know how it goes.

Gd.

[JK2015]

Hi.

It took me some time, but now I got to it.

I backed up a NAS with 2,7TB (about 850.000 files) of data and the Job took about 33 hours (average speed is 24MB/s).

Regards,

Jo

[Dima P.]

Hi Jo,

What is shown as a bottleneck? Also I wonder if you installed the latest Update 3? Thanks.

[JK2015]

Hi Dima,

I have currently installed update 2b, but not 3.
Bottleneck is "source", which would be the NAS, which should be on a 1GBit/s connection.

Regards,

Jo

[Dima P.]

Thanks. So NAS is connected via Ethernet, right (and is there an option to test SAS/FC connection)?