Starwind VTL with GFS Media Pools

[Matt@Work]

I'm trialling the Starwind VTL with Veeam GFS Media Pools and I'm trying to set it up in a way that I have appropriate retentions for the various backups types.

Starwind VTL has a feature where it automatically purges old data in the cloud when it no longer hosts the data in the secondary VTL repository. However, its not smart enough to do this more granularly than per VTL. So, they have suggested multiple VTL's to meet our requirements.

What I was thinking was

4 Media Pools (Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Annually)

Weekly [Daily OP (14 days, append, do not export)][Weekly OP (4 weeks, do not append, do not export)]
Monthly [Monthly OP 12 months, do not append, export to Offline Media Vault]
Quarterly [12 Quarters/3 Years], do not append, export to Offline Media Vault]
Annually [12 Years, do not append, export to Offline Media Vault]

Cloud replication is to ODS Cloud Tier at the moment, but I am also considering the Wasabi Starwind Storage Gateway. The cloud replication settings are configured as

Replicate immediately after tape removed from drive. Create new empty tapes when existing removed from VTL for replication
Keep local copy x days after replication (Changes per VTL, for daily was thinking either the same as the daily retention now, 30 days, or half of that value)
Keep copy in cloud storage x number of days after file is replicated (This will likely be the same value as the media pool so we have them available in both locations for the same amount of time.

Is this viable, am I doing it the wrong way. All advice appreciated.

[HannesK]

Hi,
I don't like tape as restore capabilities are not flexible and configuration is more complex What do you think about using Veeam capacity tier to move old data to S3 / Azure directly?

Backup job -> backup copy job with GFS -> move old data to S3 / Azure

Best regards,
Hannes

[Matt@Work]

Hi

I like the airgapped nature of the VTL, and Starwind then has the capability to connect to Azure/AWS or as I'm trialling, Wasabi Storage Gateway to the cloud.

[HannesK]

Hi,
well yes, that's a point for VTLs.

From Veeam perspective: all offload is transparent for us. So not really relevant from a configuration perspective. As you mention limitations of the VTLs, you can use multiple ones. That's okay from Veeam perspective. Job settings make sense to me.

Best regards,
Hannes