Discussions related to exporting backups to tape and backing up directly to tape.
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atakacs
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[Newbie] Tape as secondary destination

Post by atakacs »

Hi

I guess a typical newbie question... I can't figure out how to setup VBR to use a tape drive a "secondary" destination. I want to keep my current VM to disk backup but enable a secondary copy to an LTO tape drive.

Whenever I click "configure secondary destination for this job" I get an error "Create at least one Backup Copy, Backup to Tape first". But I don't seem to see a way to do that running standard edition. Is this only available in the enterprise version ? If so what can I do - if anything - with my tape drive ??

I tried to browse the online help but I am somewhat lost TBH.
Adrian1980
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Re: [Newbie] Tape as secondary destination

Post by Adrian1980 » 1 person likes this post

Hello,

you have to define an Tape-Job and add existing Backups/Backup-Jobs to this Tape-Job, Veeam link this as secondary destination to the Disk Job automatically.

Greets,
Adrian
Proud to be a Veeam Certified Architect.
Dima P.
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Re: [Newbie] Tape as secondary destination

Post by Dima P. »

Adrian is right, in order to use tape infrastructure you need to register it first:

1. Define tape server role (could be same machine as Veeam B&R)
2. Connect tape device to your tape server and make sure that device drivers are installed. That would make tape device visible in the Veeam B&R UI
3. Create Media Pool to organize tape media
4. Add file to tape or backup to tape job

Hope this helps, cheers!
JPMS
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Re: [Newbie] Tape as secondary destination

Post by JPMS »

I believe you need enterprise edition to achieve what you want.

If you look at the version differences for tape support it says "All editions support copying Windows, Linux and VM backup files to tape, parallel processing, Unknown Media Changer (via native SCSI commands), failover to SCSI and Global Media Pools (GMPs). Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions add tight integration with backup jobs and support full tracking of VMs and restore points on tape, as well as in media vaults. These editions also include support for global media pools (spanning multiple tape libraries) and a dedicated media-pool type to simplify Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) retention. Enterprise Plus also provides NDMP-to-Tape support."

It was a while ago but from what I remember when I was selecting a version, you couldn't achieve proper integration with backups without the enterprise version. With the standard and community editions it was more of a manual process. Fine for one-offs or irregular use but painful for regular use. I'm sure somebody else here will fill you in on the detail or correct me if I'm wrong.
Dima P.
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Re: [Newbie] Tape as secondary destination

Post by Dima P. »

I believe you need enterprise edition to achieve what you want.
Backup to tape jobs indeed require Enterprise edition or higher. File to tape jobs are available in all editions, including Community.
With the standard and community editions it was more of a manual process.
Clarification: file to tape jobs are fully automated, but there is not tight integration with backup to disk jobs (i.e. it cannot create synthesized full backups to split up the forever incremental chain, you cannot use GFS media pools as a target and scheduling options cannot be 'linked' to the primary disk jobs). However, you can use file to tape jobs to write backup chain with periodic fulls to tape at the desired time without any issues. Hope that helps!
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