Tape Retention

[sf4692]

Hello Guys,

i have a standalone LTO5 Tape where i manually Change the tapes. Monday to Thursday tapes should be overwritten in a weekly cycle, the Friday Tapes should be overwritten all 4 weeks (i have Friday 1, 2, 3, 4 tapes).

So i do a full File Backup each day (no incremental Jobs), but i run into 2 Problems.

Problem 1:
Alltough there is space left on the tape after the first Job is written in week 1 i Need to manually mark the tape in the following week (week2) as free so veeam will take the same tape again to backup and overwrite it.

Problem 2:
I tried to restore manually from a tape from last week (wednesday week1), so i inventoried the tape (so i can browse the files which are on the tape), but if i try to restore a file from this tape which is in the drive and want to restore a file i cannot choose the actual tape which is in the drive, only the file from the last session.

What do i Need to configure correctly so i can restore from also from older tapes which are not overwritten by a Job (i.e. today is wednesday and i want to restore a file which was backupped last thursday).

hope i made myself clear!

thank you
Franz

[Dima P.]

Hello Franz,

i Need to manually mark the tape in the following week (week2) as free so veeam will take the same tape again to backup and overwrite it.

What settings you used for media pool, specifically for media set creation and retention?

but if i try to restore a file from this tape which is in the drive and want to restore a file i cannot choose the actual tape which is in the drive, only the file from the last session.

Did you use during file from tapes restore operation > objects to restore > media set button to choose what media set to use in order to restore file from tape? Also could you please clarify you are trying to restore the entire folder or only selected file? Thank you.

[sf4692]

Hello Dmitry,

i think Problem 2 i have solved, i didn't knew i have to tick the "Export current media set" box so that Veeam creates me a single restore Point for tape backup.

For Problem 1 i created a media store which is "never protect data, overwrite data if needed and create new media set for every session"

thank you

[sf4692]

a i forgot something, what if my physical machine crashes and it looses these Restore Points/Media Sets, can i manually read out an older tape (ie. the monthly backup from 2 months ago) and restore from this tape without having the restore Point? Or is there a General function planned in future to do so?

[foggy]

Not sure I follow you here. If you have a valid restore point (full VBK file) on tape, you will be always able to restore from it.

[veremin]

As long as the data located on a given tape media is all-sufficient (doesn’t depend on date that resides on different cassettes) , in case of disaster, you will be able to catalogue this tape and restore the data from it without any issues.

Thanks.

[sf4692]

Hi!

my Backup Job is Files to Tape. So if i insert an individual tape to restore lets say a word document what do i have to do here?

1. i insert the tape
2. i catalog drive to identify the tape
3. i catalog the tape so i can see the files which are stored on the tape

and then how do i create the restore Task to restore from the tape which is inserted?

[foggy]

Click Restore on the toolbar and select Tape > Restore Files. Please refer to the corresponding user guide section for details.

[veremin]

You will see this file reflected under Files -> Tape node; there you can right-click on desired item and select “restore”.

I recommend you conducting a simple test in order to familiarize yourself with the restore procedure, since practice will tell you much more than simple words do.

Thanks.

[sf4692]

the Problem is that it Forces me to select a backup set and i dont have this backup set which is linked with the inserted tape. I can only restore from yesterdays tape Job.

How can i inventory the backup set which is linked to the inserted tape from last thursday?

[veremin]

Are your trying to restore individual object as is or via root folder? Thanks.

[sf4692]

i tried both..

[veremin]

By default, if data on tape is all-sufficient, wizard should restore the latest file version from a given media without need to insert additional tapes. If you’re not seeing this, kindly, open a ticket with support team and let them address it directly.

Thanks.

[sf4692]

just to clarify i understand you correctly, the latest file means veeam tries to restore the file from yesterdays tape, tough i inserted the tape from last thursday and want to restore the tape from last thursday?

[veremin]

In case of completely infrastructure lost (as per your original question), it will try to restore whatever version that is present on tape injected into drive.

If you infrastructure still exists, and you go to “File” tree and try to restore a certain file, VB&R, by default, will try to restore the latest file version. If you want to restore certain file version, kindly, click Backup Set option in the setting of restoration wizard. In the list of available backup sets, select the necessary one.

Hope this makes sense.
Thanks.