Disaster tape restore

[jcalvetm]

Situation (so far simulating):

Environment:

- Servers on premise. Two physical with several Hyper-V VMs.
- Local SOBR
- LTO Tape drive (Stand alone - NO TAPE CHARGER. Single tape, manual change)
- NO CLOUD, NO ALTERNATE SITE - NO NOTHING but On Premise resources.

Backup Policy:

- Backup jobs to (local) SOBR: VMs backed up as hosts with agent and Agent backup of the two hosts.
- Backup policy: Forever forward incremental to the SOBR and Tape set as a secondary storage.
- Tape policy: "Daily tapes - Monday to friday". Monday to Thursday contains a Synthetic Full of everything. Friday contains Synthetic Full for friday and incrementals for Saturday and sunday. Once a month there is a "Monthly tape" with a synthetic Full of everything

So, summary: Air gapped and long term copy is a tape with a full backup of "everything". No "externals", no "cloud", no "alternate sites".

Desire: The "thing" behind all that is that in case of disaster everything could be recovered from a single tape (Which is the only air gapped copy in the whole organisation). In case of servers being lost, just getting a new set of servers and a single tape should be enough.

Apart of a disaster, another thing I can face is a request from the company to get the status of a computer in a certain moment in time (due to "operative" reasons or to recover something deleted in the past): SOBR keeps X days, Daily tapes a re rewritten every 15 days and could be necessary to recover this particular machine from a Monthly tape.

Tried to recover a backup from tape (an agent backed up Hyper-V VM -as it were a host-). In order to avoid accidents, I copy this backup to another computer (out of the production environment to avoid accidents and to avoid "indiscreet eyes" -sometime that's the request-) and I also copy Backup extractor.

The desired situation would be getting the whxd files or defining a new VM in an (external) Hyper-V server and recover the backup over this VM (using the recovery media) in order to get a funcional computer.

Thing is that Backup extractor only extracts 4 files (a VeeamRecoveryMedia.zip, two digest files with names like digest_51d0e1b4-a2a3-454a-9264-237150e72927 and a third file with a similar name -I can open this file with 7-zip- containing img files for all the disk partitions).

If I try to define a VM and boot it with the recovery media, the wizard only tells me that "No backups found".

This must be a metadata matter, I asume.

My problems are:

1 - How can I restore a computer of out an isolated .vbk file? How do I get metadata for this backup without installing an alternate veeam server?

2 - If in a case of disaster the only things in my hands are a tape in my hands and a Recovery media CD.
Which is the whole procedure?
Are backup tapes "self contained"?
Is backup database (or at least backup metadata) included in the tape?
Do I have to backup (apart) the database backup manually?


Thanks in advance

Jordi Calvet

[jcalvetm]

Update:

So far, from a restored backup from tape I managed to recover a VM backup. It is just installing a "new" Veeam B&R server and importing the backups restored from tape.

Next thing to investigate is just restoring tapes to repo in an "empty" B&R server.
Will update then.

[Mildur]

Hi Jordi

Thanks for the update of your test.

The tape should have the metadata file and VBK for this machine. Deploy a new backup server, connect the tape drive, catalog the tape and you will see the backups on that tape. From there you can start recovering your machines:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

Are backup tapes "self contained"?

Yes, for the restore points on that tape. Everything you need to restore that particular restore is on this tape.
You only require a Veeam Backup & Replication server (can be a new one) to restore from the data.

Is backup database (or at least backup metadata) included in the tape?
Do I have to backup (apart) the database backup manually?

The tape doesn't contain a complete backup of your backup server configuration. A tape only stores the backup file and metadata for the restore points on this tape.
If you use File To Tape jobs, you can also write the *.bco file (configuration backup) to the tape. But I suggest to store this BCO file not on Tape only. Because you will need Veeam Backup & Replication to restore the BCO file first before you are able to restore it to the backup server.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

Best,
Fabian

[jcalvetm]

Thanks for the reply.

I just supposed that the recovery process should be something like that (Setting up new server / catalog Tape / Restore)

Now I am just locating a "test server" with a spare tape unit in order to test (As we say -IT expression-: "Experiments are only done with soda pop" (In Spanish: "Los experimentos se hacen con gaseosa" -You never run into a "risk situation" on tests. The "most dangerous thing you use in a -chemistry- lab test should be as dangerous as soda pop" ).

I am considering backing up the .bco but I must find how. Tape job is not "file to tape" but "secondary destination" to agent backups. I must find how to "include it".

Working on it.

Regards.
Jordi Calvet

[Mildur]

Hi Jordi

Tape job is not "file to tape" but "secondary destination" to agent backups. I must find how to "include it".

You could only use a fileshare job which backups the BCO file to disk. Add that file share job as a source to the Tape job.
Getting access to the BCO file on the tape will require some steps. You would have to catalog your tape before you can start recovering the BCO file.

Maybe it's easier to write the BCO file to an immutable object storage target. You can download the BCO file from the object storage bucket with your web browser (or third party tools).
No need to configure your new backup server first with a tape server and catalog your tapes to able to get access to the BCO file.

Best,
Fabian

[jcalvetm]

Thanks for the reply.

Thing is that company has only one site and it has not cloud infrastucture (So everything should be in-house -Not very useful in case of disaster or fire: immutable repo would be also lost-). VMs or local NAS are not a good idea for an immutable repo: if your installation is hacked immutable repo is still immutable, but if hackers gain access to NAS management or VM's host, simply formatting host hard disks "finishes the magic". Bye bye to everything.

So far I have included "copying-pasting" the .bco files manually in my daily "backup checking" routine.

I really think that Veeam B&R is really one of the best products in the market (if not the best, as far as I know), but, in my opinion, sometimes relies a bit on "big infrastructure" for backing up "big things", using the latest technologies and cloud infrastructure, managing multiple sites...

But, there are a lot of small companies with small infrastructure and with small IT budgets, not willing to spend money in monthly cloud subscriptions or things as a tape robot. In the end, as IT technician, you have to do with some local space in disk (local drive or nas -even USB disks sometimes) and a stand alone tape driver -only one tape, manual change- if you are lucky.

I am conscious that this are not the sort of customer that appears in any distributor "Our customers" page in any company's web, but they do exist.

Anyway... Keep myself on the fight...

Thanks and best regards

Jordi Calvet