Calculating size of ToTape jobs ?

[notrootbeer]

Hello,

I recently put together a simple script that'll calculate the "Transferred Size" of our ToDisk jobs and then using that number to limit the number of tapes labeled so that Veeam won't use more tapes than it should for tape backups. The problem we're seeing is that it won't account for the size of synthetic fulls. In other words, while the [incremental] ToDisk job was only 100GB, the corresponding tape job might be in the TBs. Is there a cmdlet of some sort that will tell us the actual size that will be written to tape before actually writing to tape? This would help us tremendously! TIA!

[veremin]

then using that number to limit the number of tapes labeled so that Veeam won't use more tapes than it should for tape backups

Can you elaborate on this a little bit, because, if configured properly, backup server will only use the minimally required number of tapes, filling each one to its full capacity? Thanks!

[notrootbeer]

Hi v.Eremin,

Thank you for your response. We can't stress enough on how Veeam does NOT always fill each one to its full capacity. We're currently using 5 tape libraries consisting of both LTO5 (1.4TB) and LTO6 (2.4TB) tapes. We notice every day where Veeam would use 5-10+ more tapes than it should. Today, for example, we see a total of 36 tapes used from the jobs that ran last night, and 9 of them has MORE than 50% of free space! We've observed many times where jobs would write 200GB to a tape and then that tape will no longer be used. We've also observed [tape] jobs hanging for HOURS because it doesn't see an available tape... but then if you restart the job, it'll see available tapes right away. (By "available", I don't mean empty tapes but, unused tapes.)

We have roughly 30 ToTape jobs; all under ONE media pool; some containing anywhere between 5-100 objects, and parallel processing set to 16. Media set is set to "Do not create, always continue using current media set".

So to take matters into our own hands, we've disabled "Add tapes from Free media pool automatically..." and we're looking to limit the number of labeled tapes based on the calculation of the ACTUAL size of tape jobs. This information has to be stored somewhere... Do you know where?

[veremin]

But having PS in this case won't help, since if backup server decides that a current media is full, there is no way to make it think otherwise via PowerShell.

With this, I'm moving the discussion to tape subforum, so we can investigate further the issue with backup server not filling tape to its full capacity.

How many drives you have? Are those backup or file to tape jobs? And by objects you refer to what exactly? Do you have a case opened for this issue, so that we can check the debug logs?

Thanks!

[notrootbeer]

PS would help... because if we're getting it to work through manual intervention, we could script it to restart the job so that it will actually see that there are available tapes to write to. We have 5 tape libraries, 4 tape drives each. Backup jobs. By objects, I mean VMs or physical servers.

Of course, this would only be a bandaid and chewing gum fix for something that should we think should already be functioning in Veeam... Is there a cmdlet that will tell you what the actual size of the ToTape job will be?

I currently do not have a case open. We've been having these issues for a long while now. We're supposed to have a couple Veeam techs come out onsite in a few weeks to go over our configuration.