Recovery from Tape - Needs major work

[Didi7]

You might help yourself, if you create more Diskjobs and spread your VMs to different Jobs before sending them to tape. In restore cases, you don't need to have so much disk space, because *.vbk's are a lot smaller and restore time is shorter.

Do not be surprised, if you put all VMs into 1 diskjob and vbk-sizes beyond several terrabytes as a result.

Be flexbible, as long as direct GRT restore of files or application items from tape is not supported.

Regards,
Didi7

[agrob]

Well i agree Didi7, but what if you have ONE file server with several tb of data...
looking forward how veeam will solve this "single item direct from tape" restore. i'm sure they can do it somehow

[Didi7]

Quote agrob:
Well i agree Didi7, but what if you have ONE file server with several tb of data...

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Well, in this case you are lost in space. Creating single VMs with large partitions, instead of distributing data to several servers, can be a pain in the ass, because snapshot consolidation could take several minutes or hours, if storage is slow or the frequency of data change is very high

Regards,
Didi7

[agrob]

it is a general problem to restore a single file out of a "Image backup" or vbk file. I agree having to large volumes is a pain. but there is also a time problem with smaler volumes. if you have a file Server with a 1tb volume (which is not large in the year 2016) and you can restore for example with 100MB/s you Need around 3hours just to restore it back to a temporary space to Mount it after an extract the file. if you file Server has 2x 1TB lun you Need arround 6h... and well, just creating 2 file Servers for around 2tb of data is not the way to go... there is a Need for a solution restoring single item from tape offload...

[Didi7]

Yes, even with 160MB/s on LTO6 it still takes a lot of time, if data ist not available in the backup repository and needs to be restored from tape, but even competitor products like Veritas Backup Exec and Veritas NetBackup cannot restore single items from tape, if data on tape is VMware snapshot data.

Btw, LTO7 can read and write data with 320MB/s, which doubles transfer rate compared to the difference between LTO5 and LTO6, which is only marginal.

I would be more than happy to have GRT restore of single items from tape as well, I just gave some advice maybe how to prevent big *.vbk file restores

Regards,
Didi7

[MichaelHaug]

Dear Veeam Team,

the latest "veeam - backup and replication" version doesnt support a direct file copy from "tape to disc". The backup was made by a "backup to tape" job. The feature to list the file directory of the tape is also missing.
Actual, you have to copy the hole backup repository to a free space of your veeam server( needs a lot of terrabytes with file-server infrastructures), than load it into your veeam disc repository. After this, brows with FLR Browser to the file and recover it.

It would be a great help if a tape file recovery will be more comfortable like this...

Best Regards

Michael Haug

[veremin]

Hi, Michael,

Your post has been merged into existing discussion talking about the same matter. Kindly, see the answers provided above by Dmitry regarding VM and files direct restore from tapes.

Thanks.

[pco]

+1 as it is a requirement for us, multiple file servers serving multiple remote site, size between 400 GB up to 8 TB so we have multiple request to restore single file.

[igetyaall]

Hi Community,

we use Veeam 8.0 and we do our Backups on Tape, now the Problem is that an User wants some Files Restored that are on Tape.
Is it Possible to Restore Single Files from a Tap ? I dont want to Restore the Full .VBK File from tape just like certain files.


Hope u can Help,

TY

[veremin]

If you want to restore a particular guest file stored inside a backup file, you need to restore a backup file first, and, then, executed guest OS file restore. Thanks.

[igetyaall]

Ty for Answering

[charissebenson]

Hello, I would prefer file restore if I have to choose. Actually I would prefer to have both

[tommmoe]

Hi all,

Just a little confused here with regards to restoring individual VM's from tape backup.

I'd just like someone to clarify if the only way I can restore an individual file from a VM which has been backed up to tape (in a job with many other VM's) is to copy over the whole backup job which is roughly 3TB just to restore one single file from a VM?

Thanks in advance

[GladstoneRC]

HI tommmoe,

When I need to do this I have to restore the VM that holds the file and not the entire backup job. Not sure if you can just restore a volume though as this would be even better.

So if I only needs tapes 2 and 3 from my 8 tape backup to restore the VM then that is all that the restore job asks for.

[tommmoe]

Hey mate,

That sounds like how I would expect it to work, maybe I'm doing it wrong?

Backup and Replication > Backups > Tape > Right click on the VM i want restored > Restore entire VM (it shows me just that VM which looks great and is only 100 GB) > Next > When I choose the repository to restore to it tells me the required space is 1.7 TB..

Start the restore job and it goes off to restore the whole entire backup job which is 1.7 TB

[UT2015]

In 9.5 you will be able to restore a VM only, see tape-f29/feature-request-easier-restore ... 37619.html

But it will still be impossible to restore a single file, you must restore the complete VM, *very impractical* indeed.

It took us several days to restore a 10kb file, because we always have to restore ~3TB. If it is not clear which restore point actually does contain the valid file, it takes several days...

With our 10-year-old backup solution (physical server) it took minutes

Best regards,
UT2015

[veremin]

That sounds like how I would expect it to work, maybe I'm doing it wrong?

In version 9.0 it's impossible to restore a particular VM from a backup file. Version 9.5 (that is just around the corner, by the way) will provide you with an ability to perform full VM restore directly from tape without staging all necessary VM backup files in a repository first.

This enhancement should guarantee better restore time.

Thanks.

[agrob]

but it does still not give the needed Option to restore a single file right out of the offloaded Image backup to tape. if i have a 2 TB Single fileserver i still have to restore the whole 2TB from tape to disk and then browse this vm to restore the single doc or xls or whatever file i need. are there any plans in the near Feature to solve this?

thanks

[veremin]

but it does still not give the needed Option to restore a single file right out of the offloaded Image backup to tape.

Nope, it does not. The priority has been given to direct VM restore from tapes, instead of direct file restore from tapes, due to the reasons stated in the adjacent thread.

are there any plans in the near Feature to solve this?

Not in 9.5. Further plans are yet to be defined.

Thanks.

[agrob]

Thanks Vladimir! as disscused in thread you mentoined, for us it is also an important feature to restore single file inside a vmdk directry from tape. hope this is on veeams feature list in the near future. we have from time to time restore requests for data several months old and this data is only present on tape. with our current file backup solution this is not a Problem. but it would be a step backwards with veeam as it is now. we are using veeam in parallel at the Moment but want to replace the traditional backup sw with veeam. but this could be a show stopper...

[veremin]

Understood. Consider your voice counted.

[McClane]

Count mine, too.

[tommmoe]

Thank you to whoever moved my thread here!

I really need to pull my finger our and use the search function better, really excited for 9.5 now!

[veremin]

You're welcome. Should other help be needed, don't hesitate to let us know. Thanks.

[Dima P.]

Hi guys,

New 9.5 is out and it allows to restore a single VM from backup on tape directly to your infrastructure bypassing the staging repository! Feel free to test this functionally and let us know how it works for you.

More information regarding new features - Whats new in 9.5

[krogerss]

Seems like it would have been better to add direct guest file restore from tape since that is what's typically needed. Maybe that's just me though.

[UT2015]

No it's not just you! Single VM restore is nice but actually not that important. Single guest file restore is that's what really important in times of TB-fileserver-VMs...

[Dima P.]

Guys,

We understand that file restore from VM on tape is also a very important functionality. We are looking into this feature request.

[UT2015]

Any news on that? Did you discuss this?

For us this is a really important feature, which we are missing (and which our previous backup solution had). We have 6 weeks backed up on disk, files older than that are only on tape. Very regular there are requests from users to restore files older than 6 weeks.

Is there any workaround to avoid restoring the complete fileserver VM?

[veremin]

Is there any workaround to avoid restoring the complete fileserver VM?

Nope.

Any news on that? Did you discuss this?

It's tracked internally already, but we're too far from next version to provide any comments regarding feature set.

Thanks.