Media Set Tape Failure

[vmtech123]

Hello

I am getting 2 new libraries and was wondering about the media sets.

Lets say I want a Pool for archiving, and want to keep these tapes forever.

My options are 1 media set for ever, a new media set every job, or once a week for example.

If I just have one media set forever, and keep archiving VM's here and the first tape gets eaten once I have 20 tapes in the set. Am I still able to do restores of the other tapes if new VM's are backed up, or does the entire media set become bad.

With TSM you could replicate between 2 libraries, and if a tape went bad, it would look at the other server/library and reconstruct the data. With Veeam I have to double up every job to point to both tape libraries. That being said, there is no way to copy a media set back to the original. I'd have to restore it, and get the data back to the other site, then re back it up.

Does Veaam have any intentions of working in some features for dual libraries like this? It would be nice to say I want all my backups to go to tape after (weekly's only even) and go to both libraries.

with 2 SANS I guess the best way to do it is backup to the repo, copy job to the second repo at the DR site. From both of the repos set up a tape job from the repository correct? that way I have the same data a both sites.

[Dima P.]

Hello SP,

If I just have one media set forever, and keep archiving VM's here and the first tape gets eaten once I have 20 tapes in the set. Am I still able to do restores of the other tapes if new VM's are backed up, or does the entire media set become bad.

Yup, media set is a logical representation of the used tape media. If you loose one tape you still can restore data from other media.

With Veeam I have to double up every job to point to both tape libraries. That being said, there is no way to copy a media set back to the original. I'd have to restore it, and get the data back to the other site, then re back it up.

With v11 you can periodically create copies of your tape media with new tape copy functionality. Hope this helps!

[vmtech123]

Is the the recommended way to use 2 libraries at different sites? Would copy jobs then backup to tape work better? It doesn't look like I can run that after a job is complete to have redundancy.

[Dima P.]

With backup copy you still have to configure several jobs per target repository.

I'd rather use two libraries for faster backup processing (i.e. parallel backups to tape). I would keep backups on the main site, backup copy those to the DR site and then use tape for a longer retention with backup copy as a source. You'll have with two copies of your backups on disk storage and your DR will be protected by tape jobs.