Secondary copies to tape.

[Dja]

Hi all... we are recent Veeam converts, from Commvault. After a recent migration from VMware to HyperV we realised that CV was no longer a fit for us. Long story.

Veeam doing a good job for us so far... we are a HyperV and Netapp shop. Backup windows are good, running all backups across the FC storage fabric using Snapvault to give us the Hardware Vss capability.

Since before new year have been trying to get the secondary copies to tape sorted. I have lost a lot of hair in the process. Our requirements pretty simple..... we keep 1 month on disk, month fulls (or syn fulls) to tape, protected for 12 months, 6 monthly's to tape permanent protection. Consider this scenario:

Job1: Incremental daily; syn full Friday; active full last Friday of each month.

All I want to is to send the output of the end of month job (on completion to disk) to tape. And just this job.
Seems to me there is no capability to achieve that. I have a case open (Case# 01248254) but no useful answer as yet.

I also have a predicament now where the end of month tape copy schedules have passed. I want to be able to select the jobs in question and copy them direct to a tape pool. Similarly seems no capability to achieve this. I hear there are more advanced tape features coming in v9 but have no idea whether it will help me here. I don't think I am asking much here? Pretty simple for most backup vendors. Thanks for any guidance.
Cheers

[skrause]

Wait until Version 9 for setting up your tape jobs.

We are in a similar retention boat to you and with Version 8 it is not the easiest thing to do. Version 9 will make putting monthly backups to tape much much easier and since it is going to be out very soon, I would recommend waiting.

[Dima P.]

Hi folks,

True in v9 we will introduce the native GFS support. Meanwhile, you can use a regular backup to tape job scheduled to run once a month. You can disable the incremental backup to tape and push to tape only full backup. As a source you can pick only the needed disk jobs.

[Dja]

Thank you all for the responses. Eagerly waiting v9 then!

I did manage to get a test file ok to tape.... it was the last full of a smaller job from end 2015. A file to tape job. Succeeded ok but no record of it under "Backups/Tape".

Ideas on that one?
Cheers

[skrause]

File to Tape jobs will not show up in "Backups", iirc. Only Backups to Tape will.

[Dja]

Ok thanks for the confirmation. Difficult then in a complex environment, to track what has been copied to tape at the point that it might be required. So best to avoid where possible, seems the sensible approach to that one.

Don't see any firm release dates posted anywhere so I guess we are all just sitting back waiting!
Cheers