Set up monthly backups

[marcos.lang]

Good night everyone!

I need help to set up a full monthly backup job using tapes in Veeam Backup & Replication using the maximum space available on the LTO7 tapes I have for this.

The scenario is as follows:
- full monthly backup
- size of data to be backed up: 1.8 TB
- Dell TL1000 tape library
- 6 (six) LTO7 tapes (5.5 TB free)

What I would like to do:
- January and July backup on tape 1
- February and August backup on tape 2
- March and September backup on tape 3
- April and October backup on tape 4
- May and November backup on tape 5
- June and December backup on tape 6
- reuse the tapes in the following year using the same logic

How to configure media pools, jobs, media sets and retention policies to achieve this goal?

Thanks in advance!

[nathano]

Create a monthly media pool with a retention of 24* weeks, setup a full backup to tape job and use that media pool.

either add the blank tapes to the pool all at once or if you want to use specific tapes add them one at a time each month for the first 6 months.

by setting the retention to 24* weeks, that should protect it for ~ 5.5 months which means other tapes will be used for the next 5 backups then it will be available again for the next backup..

hope that makes sense, any questions, just ask

* - I'm pretty sure 24 will work, or you might want to use days.. using months for the retention could be a bit tricky, and days/weeks will allow you to target the expiry date far enough after the 5th subsequent backup to be safe.

[marcos.lang]

Hi Nathan!

First of all, thank you very much for responding.

And yes, this proposition makes perfect sense to me!

But, rereading my post, I believe that I did not make clear an important piece of my puzzle (and I apologize for that ), Which would be to keep 2 months of backup on each of the tapes until the beginning of the next 12-month cycle.

In the proof-of-concept I did, I managed to record the first 6 months on the first 6 tapes, but when I used the first tape again to record the seventh month the existing backup was overwritten, even though there was more than 3.5 TB free on the tape (which I would like to use it for the sake of saving costs).

I hope I have clarified the "last piece"...

I wonder if the correct thing in this case would be to create a second media pool using the same tapes, both configured with a media set "Do not create, always continue using current media set" and a 28-week retention policy.

Following this line of reasoning, I would create 2 jobs and associate each one of them with one of the (two) media pools created. One of the jobs for the even months and another for the odd ones.

What do you think? Is it possible to do that?

Again, thank you very much for your kind attention!

[nathano]

So a couple of things to consider.

tapes can only be in one media pool.

Why Jan and Jul on the same tape? why not Jan and Feb and then retain for however long based on the Feb retention date.

If you have Jan and July on the same tape, then how long will you retain that tape for? if you then use the tape in Jan the next year you have retained the Jan backup for 12 months and the July backup for only 5 months (ish)... the jobs are written to the tapes sequentially so you can't go back and overwrite just the first job, once you re-write the tape it's all gone.

You are going to have problems with your plan.

Honestly, buy 6 more tapes and make your life simple!

If you have 2 backups on a tape and for some reason the tape fails you have now lost 2 backups not one.

just some thoughts