Backup to tape questions

[ashman70]

I have two clients for which I have questions about backup to tape:

Client 1.

One host running Vmware 5.5 with a physical tape drive. The VM is running Microsoft SBS 2011 and talking to the tape drive for backups using Backup Exec. The Veeam server in this environment is a windows 7 host running Veeam backups to an external USB 3 drive (not ideal, I know). My question is, can I add the tape drive on the Veeam server and have backups run to the tape which is physically in the host running VMware?

Client 2.

Two hosts running Vmware 5.1, one host is production, second host is for replicas. The Veeam backup server in this environment is a physical Windows 2008R2 server but it is doing many things (application server, file server, remote access server) and is the Veeam proxy too. I am currently running nightly backups of data from this physical server to tape using Backup Exec 2010, could I also add Veeam Backups to the tape and would those Veeam backup to tape jobs just append to the data already on the tape, or would it better to use separate tape for Veeam backup to tape jobs?

[Dima P.]

Hi ashman70,

My question is, can I add the tape drive on the Veeam server and have backups run to the tape which is physically in the host running VMware?

If the tape device is connected directly to ESXi, then I would say its not supported by VMware, but that does not meant you can use ISCSi path thru . However, you would need to prevent third party software from locking the tape device.

would those Veeam backup to tape jobs just append to the data already on the tape, or would it better to use separate tape for Veeam backup to tape jobs?

Same as in the first case – one application per tape device. Backup software usually blocks the drive/changer device so it prevents other application from using the same device simultaneously.

[ashman70]

I understand that both a third party job and veeam job should not be run simultaneously but are you saying on a physical server that has a tape drive in it and is using third party backup software, couldn't also be used by Veeam to run backup to tape jobs outside of the third party backup software schedule? Does the tape drive have to be dedicated to Veeam?

[Dima P.]

Does the tape drive have to be dedicated to Veeam?

Yes - library is locked once it is presented to the software due rescan operations and other nonscheduled operations.