Tape Backup Scheduling

[sbbots]

I currently backup a remote site to tape twice a month for disaster recovery. I normally run the backups on the 1st and 15th of every month. I use exact dates as it is easier for our non-computer-literate remote users to swap tapes on an exact day every month than say "every two weeks". The users know that the 1st and 15th day of every month is "swap the tape for the IT guy" day. They also know that the 2nd and 16th day of each month is when they bring that tape back to the office offsite.

That said, I noticed that the scheduling for tape backups in Veeam B&R 7 does not allow me to select exact days of the month for backups. The only option is to use the first-second-third-fourth occurance of a specific day of the week (e.g. "Run backup on the first Saturday of every month"). It doesn't really affect getting the backups done, but it would be nice to have explicit control over the exact day when the backup is run.

Please add this to your tape backup suggestion box. Thank you!

[kennocha]

I believe unless I am wrong, you could do this.

When you setup your job, on the summary screen you should get:

Code: Select all

Name: Duplicate to Tape
Media pool for full backups: Full Media Pool
Media pool for incremental backups: Incremental Media Pool
Command line to start the job: "C:\Program Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\Veeam.Backup.Manager.exe" backup 1889a299-6b7e-43be-a1b7-9c46015e6f98

You can create a windows task in the scheduler to execute that commandline, which would perform the way you want.

Someone who knows more may correct me if I am wrong.

[sbbots]

I thought about using task scheduler, but I hate fudging apps to run which already have a built-in scheduler. I will give it a try though.

[HussainMahfood]

How to select 1st day of each month regardless of the day name?

[Gostev]

It's not possible.

[veremin]

Hi, Hussain. As mentioned, it’s not possible with the current version of VB&R, though, you might want to use Windows Task Scheduler in order to achieve what you’re after. Thanks.

[Dima P.]

Hello Matt,

The users know that the 1st and 15th day of every month is "swap the tape for the IT guy" day. They also know that the 2nd and 16th day of each month is when they bring that tape back to the office offsite.

I guess the main question is how to export written tape on the specific day when your IT guy moves it to offsite location. We are currently reviewing the automatic export functionality which would allow exporting media from the tape library on the specific days, so this could cover your scenario.

Thank you!

[sbbots]

I guess the main question is how to export written tape on the specific day when your IT guy moves it to offsite location. We are currently reviewing the automatic export functionality which would allow exporting media from the tape library on the specific days, so this could cover your scenario.

To be honest, I am not sure what that means. All I want is to schedule backups for a specific day of each month (like the 1st of each month every month), not a weekday. It has nothing to do with the media library if that is what you are getting at.

[tsightler]

I have a small Powershell script that can be run as a post-job activity that will specifically set the next run time for a job. I'd need to modify it slightly for tape jobs but that should be easy enough. I'm travelling at the moment but as soon as I get home I'll grab it and modify it for tape jobs and post it here.

[veremin]

I have thought about it already, but the problem is that tape jobs don’t have post-job activity.

Actually, post job activity field of a tape job is still accessible through the PowerShell, though, I have no idea whether it should work if specified this way or not. Thanks.

[tsightler]

Ah, good point, I completely forgot about that. I might still test to see if post jobs actions do run with tape jobs if set via Powershell, but that's a good feature request, tape jobs should have post-job activity as well.

With that current limitation running the job directly from Task Manager is probably easier, although I guess you could also run a script from Powershell that updates that start time on the job. I'm never too excited to have to schedule jobs via Task Manager because you loose a single point of view into job scheduling and seeing a job with no schedule in the Veeam management interfaces can be confusing. I suppose a simple note in the description field that the job is being manually run by Windows Task Manager might be an easy solution to that though.

Hopefully a future version will offer a small tweak that will allow uses to pick not just Sun-Sat, but a generic option for just "Day". That way you can simply select "Monthly...First...Day" or "Monthly...Last...Day" without selecting a specific day.

[veremin]

Yep, totally agree with you. Even if it’s possible to update post-job activity of a tape job via PS, the issue regarding loose of single point of view would still persist – you’d be totally unaware about what processes are started after the job, unless you access it via PS or make a corresponding note in the description field.

Thanks.

[tsightler]

True, but it's not quite as bad because with a post-job OS script that updates the job schedule for the next run means that the GUI/EM will at least show the proper date for the next run, while when manually running the job from Task Manager the job shows <Not Scheduled> in the GUI/EM, which can be quite confusing. You may not know about the magic Powershell that's updating this schedule, but at least you would be able to see when it will run next.