Tape server setup / architecture

[GillesBruno]

Hi all

We're using Veeam Availability Suite V10 and planing an upgrade to v11 this summer.
In our 2 main DC, we've got 2 veeam servers each backing up our whole VMWare private infrastructure (still ESX 6.7).
Each servers run the same jobs spread evenly across the night (incremental + one active full each weekend).
On every morning, we run on each server a backup copy job (secondary target/SOBR) which cross-copies to an external equallogic located on the other DC (safety).

As is, the backup window last about 8 hours (6/8PM - 2/4AM) and the backup copy about the same (7AM - 3/4PM)

We plan to add a further protection, beside long term storage with newly bought tape servers and libraries (dell ML3/LTO7) but don't want to run another backup to disk which would impact our production during business hours so a few questions :
-is it possible to run a "backup to tape" job based on our backup copies ( VM -> backup -> backup copy cross DC -> backup to tape ) ?
-can the tape servers be "standalone", as long as they've access to the backup copy (ie. read only equallogic volume access) ? Our must the tape servers be the same as the VBR servers ?

thanks for your advices
best regards,

Gilles

[Dima P.]

Hello Gilles,

-is it possible to run a "backup to tape" job based on our backup copies ( VM -> backup -> backup copy cross DC -> backup to tape ) ?

Sure, any image-based backup is supported by backup to tape job as well as backup copy.

-can the tape servers be "standalone", as long as they've access to the backup copy (ie. read only equallogic volume access) ? Our must the tape servers be the same as the VBR servers ?

Tape server component acts like a proxy server when it comes to the data retrieval. It serves the connection between backup repository and tape library, so should have access to the repository (btw you can install tape server role directly to the Window repository and connect tape device to the repo to isolate the network traffic).

[GillesBruno]

Thanks Dima !

I read it in the docs but wanted to be sure
One last question : do the tape server need to have big & fast temporary storage - I presume they must be able to hold the biggest backup in case of restoration, but do they also need to be fast (power NFS/on the fl ?)

thanks

best regards
G

[Dima P.]

Hi Gilles,

Nope, tape server does not keep any data locally, so storage requirements are minimum. Here are system requirements. Hope that helps!