Job Copy to Tape

[20100]

Hi

I am new to Veeam and I have troubles to achieve a tape copy from a backup job.

Our current backup solution (phased out and replaced with Veeam), does a (perpetual) incremental backup to disk, which is automatically followed by a consolidation onto a full backup to disk, which is automatically followed by a tape copy of the full backup. So every day, we get a full backup on tape to be taken off site. Note the retention dates for both backup sets on disk and tape are different.

I am trying to reproduce this with Veeam, but have not quite managed it.
Backup to disk is OK. It is set as (perpetual) incremental with 2 weeks of retention
I have setup a Tape Pool with retention of 1 week.
When I tried to setup a Tape Copy Job, there is no such option. Either it is a Tape Backup, either it is a Backup Copy, but in the latest case, you cannot pick a Tape Pool as the destination.

Reading through the forum, it looks like I need to use the "Configure Secondary destination for this job"
However, when I tick this option, it asks me first to create a Tape Job which I did
When I created the Tape job for Media Pool, there is Full Backup and Incremental Backup. Do I need to tick the "Process incremental backup files"?
I did not think I need to, but not 100% sure or/and do I need to change first the Disk backup from incremental to reverse incremental?

I did not tick the "Run the job automatically", as there is no way to know for sure at what time the backup onto disk will finish.

However, when I did performed the backup onto disk, no tape copy took place after the backup to disk.

What is exactly the way to achieve this?

Thanks in advance

Anyway,

[foggy]

You need to select the "Run the job automatically" check box and specify the job scheduling options, otherwise the job does not run.

[20100]

Thanks that worked automatically from the backup disk job I ran yesterday. I will test again running this time the backup job to disk.

Another question, if I may: is there a way to set holidays somewhere? I realize it is not critical for backup to disk, but for tape jobs, it is really necessary. For example if there is a public holiday, you do not want the tape job to start as there is no one to put the tapes. Of course you could put the tapes in advances, but how Veeam would select the correct tape from the correct day, when the tapes belong to the same pool?

Thanks

[Dima P.]

Hello,

is there a way to set holidays somewhere?

There is no such functionality, instead you can define the exact days of the week or month in backup to tape schedule.

how Veeam would select the correct tape from the correct day, when the tapes belong to the same pool?

Please take a look at media set creation option. Depending on your choice, it is either appended (continue existing media set) or written to the new media (create new media set for every backup session). Additionally, you can use ‘Daily at’ option to create a new media set on the specified day. Since new media set was created tape in the previous media set is no longer appendable.

[20100]

Hi

It is not really possible to exclude a specific date. the tape schedule is only for each day of the week. Would be good to have a calendar where you can select the days of weeks as it is now, and then can exclude specific days or have an exception file that you manually update.

For the media set creation option, it is not exactly what I am after. For example, for a daily backup, as there is no holidays option, imagine that on a specific Wednesday, it is public holiday. On the Tuesday we put the Tuesday and Wednesday tapes (both belong to the same pool). How Veeam is going to decide to use the Tuesday tape on Tuesday and not the Wednesday tape instead?

Thanks

[veremin]

You can write a script similar to this one and schedule it via Windows Scheduler. Being scheduled, the script will disable tape jobs on the given dates (be it public holiday or whatever date you like). Just replace Get-VBRJob with Get-VBRTapeJob Thanks.

[20100]

Thanks everyone for your input so far. I made some good progress but I still unsure I got the right settings.
I read lots of answers in the forum but get quite confused as some topics seems to start with Version 7 and then move to V8 (which has different behaviours) and also there are often more references to Backup to Tape where I am more interested in Tape Copy.

We are running V8 with the latest patches. I have setup a daily backup job onto disk repository. It set to keep 14 days for quick local restore. The job mode is "Incremental (recommended)"
This is all working good. But we also need to send a tape copy off site every days.
We have 5 tapes: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Each tape will be overwritten every weeks.

I have setup the daily backup job (to disk) with the option " Configure secondary destination for this job" and have created a Tape Backup job.
I did not Select "Process incremental backup files" and selected "Run the job automatically" with "As new backup files appear"

It seems to work, but looking closely at the tape generated, I can see that we can restore from previous days, which implied to me that we copy more than the full backup.
I tried different settings (cannot recall exactly all the one tried) but it went the opposite way when I could not restore because the full backup was not on tape!

Really, what I am after is that every day, we get the latest (full) backup copied only for that day onto tape, that does not require a mix of (disk) full and incrementals and can be restored on its own without the requirement of a previous tape.
Ideally, I would prefer if there was no post scripts, as it introduce too many support difficulties.

I have the feeling that I might have to change the disk Backup to use "Reverse Incremental (slower)" for this to work, but if it is the case, are the current settings for the Tape Job correct? Or is there a proper way to do it?

Thanks in advance

[veremin]

There are two options. First - switch to reversed incremental job and let backup to tape job copy the latest restore point that is always full backup. Second - leave forward forever incremental mode in place, deselect "process incremental" option and let backup to tape job create synthesized full backup on daily basis. The second approach will require for you to implement the upcoming patch 2 that allows synthesized full backup be created without ticking "process incremental" option. Thanks.

[20100]

Thanks

I was using the 2nd method but it does not seem to be great probably because we are not on patch 2 yet.
For the first method (reverse incremental), when you say "let backup to tape job copy the latest restore point", is there any settings for this to tick/untick or does it just happens automatically?

Thanks

[Dave338]

I'm in the same situation, but my tape backups must be done weekly.

After balance different options (that required double repository space), I'll switch to reverse incremental, until patch 2 be released. I didn't want it to do because it is substantially more disk intensive (and I'm using FATA disks), but I prefer that than duplicating my jobs (and repo. space) to have a full copy of the machines I want weekly in order to archive them to tape.

Any estimation on release date for the patch 2 ???

Regards.
Dave.

[20100]

Hi

After several days of testing and tweaking, I am to say that using Tapes with Veeam is a nightmare compared to Backup Exec or HP Dataprotector.
It should take 5mn to setup properly once for all and get on with other tasks. It is not the case here, and I am surprised there is no easy 1 page instruction white paper or similar instead of having users trying all sort of things and having to guess with the help of other users via the forum.

For example, our latest issue:
The tape copy is automatically started using the option " Run the job automatically, as new backup files appear"
Well, for some reason, last night tape job did not start, waiting for the tape. The tape could have been protected, dead, anything really, it is not the important thing.
The tape job was stopped, but as soon as it got stopped, another one started "waiting for tape"
The Monday (unused) tape was removed off the library and the Tuesday tape (for the future backup tonight) was inserted in the library, and of course the Monday backup started automatically to be written on the Tuesday tape!
This should not happen. If a tape job is stopped it should be stopped. we only want a tape copy job to start at the completion of a (disk) backup, not on its own!

Obviously the scheduling for tape job is not quite up to speed. Would the best method to start the tape copy be instead "Run the job automatically, After this job" and select the (disk) backup job?
Will only the latest (consolidated) full backup be written to tape?

I realize I can try all this myself, but this is not always easy to experiment in a live environment and it would be easier if there was a proper set of instructions to follow, as I am pretty sure it is a pretty common scenario

Thanks

[Dima P.]

Hello qq,
I am sorry to hear that and thank you for being fair. By the way, have you checked the Veeam B&R user guides from this page or Online Help Center?

The Monday (unused) tape was removed off the library and the Tuesday tape (for the future backup tonight) was inserted in the library, and of course the Monday backup started automatically to be written on the Tuesday tape!
This should not happen. If a tape job is stopped it should be stopped. we only want a tape copy job to start at the completion of a (disk) backup, not on its own!

I believe it happened because the tape job was not canceled; instead, it was sitting in this waiting free tape state. Once the tape was loaded, it started to write new data immediately.

By default its waiting for tape to be inserted for 72 hours, please let me know if you want to adjust the waiting timer and I’ll send you a special regkey. (This option is hidden from UI)

Would the best method to start the tape copy be instead "Run the job automatically, After this job" and select the (disk) backup job?
Will only the latest (consolidated) full backup be written to tape?

When creating a new backup to tape job it should track the existing backup chain and ask you to backup all the chain or only the part of the existing chain, starting from the last full backup.

[20100]

Hi

Yes I have read the manuals and help center but it did not really help. Perhaps in the future, it would be good to have a few samples of standard configuration in a white paper, as I am sure there must be only half a dozen of common use scenario and it would save a lot of time (and frustration) from end users.

How to do you cancel a job? I right clicked on it and selected "Stop Session".
Yes, I am very interrested in the special regkey. Thanks for that. in our case for daily backup copy we would not want to wait more than 12 hours. If the tape copy failed, we just want to get on with the following day tape (our tape operators have no idea if the tape copy was successful or not, they just insert/retrieve tapes)

I have made changes for tonight, to use "After this job" instead of "As new backup files appear" and see what happens.

To be honest I still struggle with the Veeam terminology of 'backup to tape job" when all we are after is a "tape copy" of a backup job (ie reverse incremental from the standard backup job on disk)

Thanks

[veremin]

How to do you cancel a job? I right clicked on it and selected "Stop Session".

Right-clicking a job and selecting a stop option should suffice.

Yes, I am very interrested in the special regkey.

I've just shared it with you via PM.

Thanks.

[jazzoberoi]

Hi

Yes I have read the manuals and help center but it did not really help. Perhaps in the future, it would be good to have a few samples of standard configuration in a white paper, as I am sure there must be only half a dozen of common use scenario and it would save a lot of time (and frustration) from end users.

I second this request. Its proving to be very difficult to setup a simple GFS based Tape Job. This was perfected in BackupExec years ago, why cant VEEAM just publish an 'OFFICIAL' step by step instructions to achieve a simple GFS scenario for standalone tape drives and tape libraries eg. MSL2024 ?

I'm almost thinking of purchasing a copy of BackupExec just for Tape Backup after having invested so much time / money / space in VEEAM.

Backing up to Tape is difficult as is.. lets not even start on the process of restoration. As to restore from tape, aren't we required to copy the entire backup file from tape to a temporary staging area on the backup server ? All this hassle to restore a couple of files from Tape ? Seriously ?

Please VEEAM, don't treat Tape users as second class citizens in your app. Tape is still widely used in organizations as the cheapest and most effective method for long term offsite archival and retention > 3-10 years !! Not every organization can afford TB's of space in the cloud for long term archival.

[veremin]

This was perfected in BackupExec years ago, why cant VEEAM just publish an 'OFFICIAL' step by step instructions to achieve a simple GFS scenario for standalone tape drives and tape libraries eg. MSL2024 ?

Because currently it's more like a workaround rather than a permanent solution. However, we do instantiate possibilities to add GFS tape functionality in one of the next product releases.

As to restore from tape, aren't we required to copy the entire backup file from tape to a temporary staging area on the backup server ?

Yes, you have to restore a backup file prior to restore granular item. Nevertheless, you can leave your vote for that functionality in the adjacent thread.

Please VEEAM, don't treat Tape users as second class citizens in your app.

We don't treat tape as second class citizens and keep adding capabilities to it with every product release. It's hard to implement everything at once, though.

Thanks.

[Dima P.]

Hello Jazz,
In addition, this organization of the GFS rotation still works

an 'OFFICIAL' step by step instructions

Thank you for being honest. We’ve sent a request to our technical writers team, to create a ‘tape best practices’ guide in addition to User Guide and Help Center resources I’ve shared before in this thread.