Can we import backup copies and backup repository to a tape?

[BostjanUNIJA]

Hi.
Specific scenario.

SITE1 - Company A
Vmware environment with VBR and tape library.

SITE2 - Company B
A customers site with VBR. Their offsite copies are being sent (with WAN accelerator) to SITE1. Backup repository on SITE1 for this customer is configured as: A VM on Vmware environment with iscsi refs formated volume connected to NAS Synology.

How can we put customers backup copies to tape located on SITE1?

One option would be that on SITE1 we make a backup of VM where customers Veeam backup repository for copies is set and then create a backup job on SITE1 that would backup this particular isci mounted volume, and then backup that to tale. But in this case Veeam would backup Veeams backup copies and that doesnt sound ok, and also if we would need to restore some specific VM we would need to restore entire content.

Is there a way to represent customers offsite backup repository in VBR environment on SITE1 in a way: we have a VM with backup copies, please import this copies into VBR (and dont interrupt backup copy jobs with import) and just create tape job which would store that repository to tape?

The idea is, that customer doesnt have air gapped backup yet and they dont have a backup library on their site, but since we do have it in our SITE1 we would like to put their offsite backup copies to tape once a year and we are trying to figure it out what would be the most optimal way/approach to achieve this.

[david.domask]

Hi BostjanUNIJA,

Two separate VBR servers cannot share the same tape library -- there is an ownership mechanism for tape servers to prevent this as it will result in many errors as neither VBR will be "aware" of the other.

Does your tape hardware support library partitioning? This would be the cleanest way, and I would create a tape server + repository on SITE1 for SITE2 to use, connect a library partition to this server, and then send backup copies from SITE2 to the repo/tape server and tape out.

If library partitioning is not possible, you'd need to copy the backups over to SITE1, and then use File to Tape for the backup to tape. This will work but note that the restore process is a bit different and the backup process is very "simple".