Feature Request: Backup VM(s) to Tape

[SGalbincea]

Hear me out (and feel free to point out if I missed a better way to do this).

We currently backup about 90 VMs using 17 backup jobs using mostly similar settings. These backups are from our production VMware cluster to a DataDomain DD2500, which then in turn replicates is data to another DD2500 at our DR facility.

I had a need to take a tape archive of two VMs that were to be retired and deleted from disk today, each previously backed up under two different jobs. What I ended up doing was creating a new job for just the two VMs, then running the tape job against that temporary job so that I only ended up with just the two VMs on the single LTO6 tape. I then removed the temporary disk job and subsequent tape job from Veeam, finally achieving my desired result.

It seems to me like this process of staging VMs to be written to tape and then actually written could be automated better in Veeam.

Example:
1. Tape section, right click, select 'VM(s) to Tape'
2. Name Job if desired to save and run again later, otherwise let it be a one time job
3. Select VMs to be written to tape, and allow for exclusions as in the disk backup dialog (disks, etc.)
4. Select staging repository for temporary backup of VMs prior to tape
5. Select Tape options, including media library, archiving options, etc.
6. Select advanced options such as tape compression, etc. (I know .vbk files are not candidates for hardware tape compression)
7. GO!

I know how a lot of people feel about tape, but in the industries I work with (mainly O&G, Energy) it is going to be a fact of life for long term retention for some time.

So, am I crazy or is this something that might make it in a future release? Thoughts?

[Dima P.]

Hello Steve,
Thank you for sharing an interesting request! To cut the long story short you want to run a one-time backup to tape directly from the infrastructure (and I assume it should be a full backup), right? How about retention/media set of the tape media that keeps such backup – should it be controlled by media pool?

[SGalbincea]

Correct - full backup directly from infrastructure would be ideal. If directly from the infrastructure is not feasible, then at least automate the staging of a full backup to a repository before writing to tape. I think retention controlled by the media pool is probably the easiest way (I created a media pool specifically for these one time archives).

[veremin]

Hmmm, haven't you thought about utilizing VeeamZIP to create a one time full backup and files to tape job to archive the resulting file to tape? It should not be that hard to automate that via PS. Thanks.

[SGalbincea]

Hmmm, haven't you thought about utilizing VeeamZIP to create a one time full backup and files to tape job to archive the resulting file to tape? It should not be that hard to automate that via PS. Thanks.

I have, but I want the VM and backup to be available in the backups view in Veeam, not just files that I have to restore and then manually re-register in VMware.

[veremin]

Got it. Then one time backup job coupled with a backup to tape job seems to be the only solution for now. If you're interested, you can create a topic in corresponding PS subforum and we will try to come up with a script to automate that task. Thanks.