Large single Backup file a risk to tape?

[themaidenmaniac]

Hi guys,

I run veeam and Symantec backup exec. However, I backup around 2-8tb's of vm's in a job. I notice that the veeam keeps the backup as one giant file, and we also burn that file to tape.

Having 1 large file gives me the heebie jeebies as all it takes is 1 error in its creation on disk, or 1 issue with a tape and the whole backup us useless.

Is there a way to break down backups into smaller chunks, or is the only way around this to create several jobs, or a job for each vm? I wanted to avoid this ideally as I didn't want to have to stagger my VM backups over the evening as it is a bit unpredictable and my tape backup has to initiate by 23:59. (However, there may not be a problem with this if I set a large number of concurrent jobs to be allowed, or maybe just set all the jobs to run at the same time, and then they can only run one after another anyway or concurrently depending on what is specified).

Cheers!

[ekisner]

I've seen this feature requested before - it would be very nice to have some form of segmentation for sure. For me the use-case would be in the event a job fails halfway through a large VM, then not needing to restart from the beginning.

[Crompton]

Until 3 months ago we were using Symantec Backup Exec as well. Backup Exec is still installed on the server along with Veeam (but with services disabled), for that occasion where we need to recover Veeam repository files prior to using the Veeam Backup to Tape jobs.

We had divided our Veeam main Backup job into 4 different Backup jobs to segment the repository files into smaller sizes so that the recovery time from Backup Exec tapes to hard drive repository was lower.

Took me a couple of weeks using Veeam Backup to Tape to optimise the Tape jobs - reading the help docs and the forums, but I'm quite happy with how it's now operating. IMO Anyone moving from Backup Exec tape to Veeam Tape will find differences which at first might seem obscure, but the Veeam Tape GUI is consistent. Just forget how you did it in Backup Exec and learn the Veeam method

[veremin]

You can split your big backup job into several smaller ones and archive the resulting jobs into tapes afterwards. Otherwise, you can put backup copy jobs into use not only as means that guarantee additional copy, but also as means to split existing backup job into several chunks without touching production environment. The corresponding files created by backup copy jobs can be then copied to tapes.

Thanks.