Feature request: Tape library management tasks

[kkuszek]

Hello,
I would like to request for the tape functionality of B&R that library management related tasks and functionality be expanded.
For example,
*ability to create virtual partitions of the slots of the library bindable to media sets (i.e. slots 15-30 are monthly backups, slots 1-7 are daily, etc.)
*ability to create a weekly scheduled task to move the last successful backup to the mail slot/specific slots, or the last known full, or last nights, etc.
*ability to schedule other tasks such as cleaning, or automatically scheduling a cleaning after specific tape errors.
*Backups can have fulls and incrementals pull from different media pools but you can't set the export task at the end of the job to only export fulls, only the whole job. I have a weekly full and daily incremental in the same job and I want the weekly to export to go off site without having to make a separate job.

[rreed]

Bear w/ me as I am just now digging into learning B&R's tape functionality (Backup Exec is clearly not going to work out for us).

Are Media Vaults(?) what you might be looking for as far as grouping piles of tapes together for specific tasks, retention points, etc?
Having it spit out a tape when done w/ a backup job would be great if this isn't already in there, as well as auto-cleaning. Our Dell TL2100 will do it on its own configured through its built-in management interface but I'd much rather have it all in one console.
Having only the full copy to tape but incremental do their normal thing to disk (or separate tape pool) would also be great if it's not already in there. Having it automatically copy its full to tape once a month in one job would be fantastic!

#tapeisnotdead

[kkuszek]

Hi,
B&R is a pretty terrible product and gave me bald spots at a previous job. Veeam tape functionality is still in it's infancy though, I find a lot of basic library management tasks (such as these) and configuration enrichment's missing. It works better than B&R for me for what it does at least.

Veeam doesn't do backup to tape, it does backup to disk and archive to tape, 2 different jobs. Then it does restore to disk then restore to xyz, not restore from tape direct.
media vaults are different, it's a nice way to organize offline tapes (disconnected, off site, etc).

Pools are what you say you can do with certain tapes and set their retention etc.

it can spit out a tape when done... sorta. Full and incrementals chain but you can't tell it to only move fulls to the mailslot or to move the last successful fulls to mailslot every monday, etc. and your incrementals would be going in the mailslot every day (great if you do daily offsite)

[rreed]

Yes, sorry, looks like it has the familiar media pools, etc. to help organize tapes. Yes, having it spit out a given full backup tape would be great, although when you get into a given job spanning tapes I'm not sure how that would work, but still would love to have it.

I'm fine w/ B2D2T, but the restore directly from tape into VMware would be great if it doesn't currently do that. What I would like to see is B2D2T be part of a copy job, rather than how it seems that tape backup is its own seperate world w/in B&R. Having your tape library being a destination for a copy job.

Agreed, it does seem like its tape management and integration seems a little basic but I would really like to see this further developed and brought more into the fold of main B&R functionality. Tape is not dead, and would be great for to help avoid spending unnecessarily on separate software (since we've discovered Backup Exec just isn't going to cut it for the data size and backup window we have).

[kkuszek]

ya know you mentioned backup exec and that made me think.

I don't see a tape verify job here, I always ran a verify after backup to tape before.
That should also be a staple in here.

[rreed]

ya know you mentioned backup exec and that made me think.

I don't see a tape verify job here, I always ran a verify after backup to tape before.
That should also be a staple in here.

Oh, crap! Gostev? Anyone?? Also, a way to confirm the tape has indeed been encrypted, so that we can provide evidence to auditors, CIO's, good nights' sleep??

[Dima P.]

Hello folks,

Indeed there is no such functionality to verify tape after it was written. It could be replaced by built in tape libraries verification (if it’s supported on your device) and in addition you can set up the Sure Backup job to check the disk backup prior placing it to tape media. That being said we got this request in our list of improvements, so thanks for sharing your feedback.

rreed,

That’s a good question. For now if encryption is enabled you can track the media encryption thru the UI or thru the tape session log.