Discussions related to exporting backups to tape and backing up directly to tape.
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JasonTravis
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Feature Request: Selectable Netapp Snapshots to tape.

Post by JasonTravis »

Greetings,

We have recently started using some of the benefits of the Netapp integration such as restoring from Storage Snapshots. Our goal for a while has been to use our Netapp snapshots as a foundation for our backups to tape. As we progressed down this path we purchased the appropriate licensing, and disabled our standard NAS repository backups. Once we created our first backup to Netapp snapshot job and kicked it off we noticed the naming convention included the date and time.

After some discussions with support about how to get these to tape, we were informed that we would need to create a "files to tape" job and create a linux VM that had access to the NFS volume where the snapshots lived. This was easily created, but the 'files to tape' dialog wants a specific folder to start the file backups. On our Netapp all snapshots live in the same folder, which leads to this request. We have daily, weekly, and hourly snapshots on our Netapp which facilitate data replication to another unit.

We, for capacity's sake cannot copy all of these snapshots in additions to the desired snaps created by veeam. We need one of two things to finish our DR plan, either give us the ability to name the snapshot statically, or allow these backup jobs which have Netapp snapshots as the destination show up in "Backups to Tape" as a selectable job.

Assistance please.

Case # 01088938
Dima P.
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Re: Feature Request: Selectable Netapp Snapshots to tape.

Post by Dima P. »

Hello JasonTravis,
This was easily created, but the 'files to tape' dialog wants a specific folder to start the file backups. On our Netapp all snapshots live in the same folder, which leads to this request.
This might be a silly question to start with but if the folder name is not changing it can be selected as a source for file to tape job, right?
alanbolte
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Re: Feature Request: Selectable Netapp Snapshots to tape.

Post by alanbolte »

The issue is that he can't separate out Veeam and non-Veeam snapshots, and doesn't have the capacity to write everything to tape.

Am I understanding correctly that the snapshot shows up as a subfolder of the .snapshot folder? So effectively you want to back up different directories each time?

As a workaround, you might be able to set up a pre-job script using Veeam powershell cmdlets to change the job content, or perhaps set up some kind of Linux shell script to map the individual snapshots to a static mount point. Scheduling the latter might be tricky.
JasonTravis
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Re: Feature Request: Selectable Netapp Snapshots to tape.

Post by JasonTravis »

You are correct Alan. All of our snapshots reside in that .snapshot folder. There are commands on the netapp to rename snapshots, and I can probably have a script grep through the veeam snapshot backup job log to drop the folder names out and pass to a cmdlet as you suggest. That would allow us to proceed, but ultimately I'm looking for a programatic solution.
DerOest
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Re: Feature Request: Selectable Netapp Snapshots to tape.

Post by DerOest » 1 person likes this post

+1 to "Netapp-Snapshot to Tape"-Request!

We're running nearly 100% virtualized (VMware, NFS-Datastores) on Netapp with SnapVault to another Netapp Nearstore and of course want to utilize Snapshot Orchestration - and NOT perform any kind of copying via Veeam into the Veeam Repository.
Still, we want to do tape backups, but what i learned is that you can not do native "Netapp-Snapshot to Tape" - you still need a Veeam Repository.
(Or if I just understood JasonTrevis right - "hack" it via mounting a snapshot somewhere and do "file to tape" - we want it native and easy to implement)

So if we did it the "right" way, we'd do another Veeam backup job (secondary Snapshot -> Veeam Repository) just to then do the Tape-Backup - creating another copy of all our data, which really is not a good solution.

Therefore... PLEASE make it so we can just take a Veeam-orchestrated secondary Storage-Snapshot and stream it to tape!

And another usecase for Snapshot-to-Tape... Netapp CIFS-Shares!
At Netapp Insight in Berlin last week, there has been huge demand for this! We ourselves are looking into alternative Backup-solutions for indexing of Netapp CIFS-Shares.
Veeam could so easily be even more attractive to Netapp (or really, any other Storage) customers!

Greetings from Germany!
Dima P.
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Re: Feature Request: Selectable Netapp Snapshots to tape.

Post by Dima P. » 1 person likes this post

Hello folks,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts - we will definitely review every single post in this thread when it comes to next major versions feature discussion.
andreashochstein
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[MERGED] Feature Request: Netapp Snapshot direct to Tape Bac

Post by andreashochstein »

Hello,
many of our cutomers using VB&R Enterprise with Netapp Snapshot integration. Usually we are Snapshoting the Primary datastores for shorttime recovery and than we snapmirror or vault on secondary system for additional backup history.
If the customer want to save some backups on tape we have the challenge that we have to add another job that do not uses Netapp snapshots (normal repository) and than copy that data to tape.

Feature Request:
Right know its possible to mount snapshots from primay and secondary Netapp system and do an instant vm recovery. Please add the functionality to mount a snapshot and than copy directly to tape.
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