Tapes are not completely filled

[TommyB]

Hi,

I have a media pool of 10 tapes, 800GB each, and all of them have between 16 and 30 GB free space.

I wonder if there is a technical reason that the tapes are not completely filled?

thomas

[veremin]

Hi, Thomas. This behavior is based totally on tape device logic – once we receive internal message from tape appliance that tape media is practically full, we stop writing to it in order to avoid potential issues. So, the amount of free space left on tape media depends on tape device vendor and possibly model, but typically should be insignificant (about 3-5% of total capacity). Thanks.

[TommyB]

Ok, in my case it is around 3.5%... Thanks for taking the time to explain it

[veremin]

You’re welcome. Should any additional help be needed, feel free to contact us. Thanks.

[Jeremy-Corintech]

Hi guys, i've seen that there was a thread like this from feb last year but couldn't find a more recent one.

I'm currently doing a network to tape back up and although i have easily enough space Veeam is telling me waiting for tape. I've been left in charge of the back up procedures whilst the IT manager is away and this is the first time i've used the system.

Any ideas?

Current version of Veeam is: 7.0.0.839
Running from Server 2008 R2
Job has been trying to run for 50 hours now
I believe that what is trying to run in the weekly incremental back up, as far as i can tell it runs every two days
there are two tapes per week, the first is now full and the second has been written on, but now it is coming up with 'WaitingTape'

I'm currently waiting for a call from the support team, but until then any input would be appreciated, I really haven't used this software very much at all.


Thanks, Jeremy.

[veremin]

Hi, Jeremy,

As mentioned above, the tape free space determination lays on drive/library shoulders. So, there is not much we can do, if the drive/library reports to us that the current cassette is full.

Anyway, the support ticket will give you the final answer, once the required logs are thoroughly analyzed. Can you post ticket number here for the convenience of future readers?

Thanks.

[Jeremy-Corintech]

support ticket: 00542550

The first tape is full and the second has over 630GB free but Veeam still says waiting for tape. the second tape has worked as it's had some data written on to it as well.

[veremin]

After filling the first tape did the tape job started writing to the second medium or it immediately showed “waiting for a valid medium” status? Thanks.

[Jeremy-Corintech]

It wrote over 150GB on to the disk then finished its back up for that day. sunday rolls in and Veeam trys to use compete the back up but shows the error message 'WatingTape'.

[veremin]

Then, may be the reason is that new media set was created on the second day and the tape job stuck because the tape medium that had the data already written to it couldn't host two different media set? Thanks.

[LeisJohn]

Here is my issue, I have a Dell Power Vault ML6000 with IBM drives. Before the latest patch 3a version 7.0.0.839 my tape jobs used all of the 372.5GB tape capacity but, now it's leaving anywhere from 10 to 70GB of unused space on each tape. it added 5 tapes to my monthly backup. Any ideas on why this is happening?

[veremin]

Hi, John,

Starting from patch#3, we're allocating some space on medium for our metadata in order to avoid situation when tape drive completely fills a tape, leaving no space for us. However, this happens only if device doesn't send us a corresponding warning about space running out. Also, the amount of allocated space is hard coded and equal to 2 GB. Therefore, the problem with left space exceeding this limit seems to be related to the tape device, rather than VB&R. For some reason it notifies us that currently inserted cassette is full, and we stop our operations.

You can open a ticket on this issue and double check it with the support team, though.

Also, haven't you updated your device recently? There is a similar case with one of our customers who has updated device drivers and started experiencing the said issue.

Thanks.

[motoxrdr21]

Veeam B&R doesn't seem to be using our tapes to capacity, we're running nightly reverse-incrementals with LTO4 tapes as the secondary, last night's backup is reported at 767.4GB, which is tight, but should wholly fit on 1 LTO4 tape with capacity in Veeam listed as 780.5GB. But this morning I came in to "waiting for tape" it had copied 756.1GB of data to the tape and ejected it prompting for another, looking at the tape that was used in Media it shows 20.7GB free, so why in the world is it asking for another tape, not only when the one in use isn't full, but when it has enough free space to complete the backup?!

[veremin]

Hi, Steve,

Please, see explanations provided above regarding tape unused space; should clarify the situation for you.

Thanks.

[rmargeson]

I have a FiletoTape job with Hardware compression enabled. Drive is LTO-3... tape capacitiy is 390.9 GB native. I have a job that requires multiple tapes. Ironcially there is over 130 GB free on the first tape. Any ideas, thoughts, questions???

[Shestakov]

Hello Rob,
VBR doesn`t write to a tape if it receives a message from the tape appliance that the tape media is full.
Could you provide more info about the issue?
What kind of tape device do you have? Do you use media rotation? What`s the size of the job? etc.
Thank you.

[jbot]

We have been having trouble with our last tape only writing a 100-200 gigs of the 2.5 tb of tape. We come in the next morning with "waiting for tape" error. We add another new tape to the library and it finishes just fine. Any ideas?

[veremin]

Is it singular case or the issue keeps re-occurring? As mentioned above, we get information regarding tape free space directly from drive/library. Thus, if the problem is recurring one, it might be worth checking whether there has been firmware or drivers update recently. Thanks.

[andreasender6840]

I have to following system setup:

- Windows 2012 R2 Server with latest updates
- B&R v8 with Update 2b

Windows 2012 R2 runs as a VM sitting on a vSphere 6 Host. The Host is a DL380p G8 Server with a HP H222 Host Bus Adapter. The Host Bus Adapter is presented as a PCI-Controller inside the VM with DirectPath I/O. The Tape is a HP Ultrium 6250 SAS Ext Drive. Everything seems to work fine but after backing up a repositroy or backup job to tape the job stops after 1,1TB and want to have a next tape!? The Tape is shown as a 2,4TB Tape inside B&R. After i cancel the job the tape shows 1,3TB free space... A job with less than 1,1TB has no problems...

All i got is this simple message from the job:
'Backup to Tape' job requires a tape to be inserted into 'HP Ultrium 6-SCSI' tape library. See the corresponding job session in Veeam Backup & Replication management console for details.

Anyone has a a configuration like this wich works?

I know - it´s not official supported to have a controller with DirectPath I/O - but is there any solution?

[veremin]

Generally speaking, we take information regarding tape free space from library/drive. So, for some reason the device seems to be misinforming a backup server.

As a first investigation step I'd check drivers, as well as, firmware. If everything looks good I'd reach our support team for closer investigation.

And direct patch is indeed not recommended due to the reasons outlined here.

Thanks.

[andreasender6840]

Just checked all driver an firmware releases. All at the latest version...

[veremin]

Then, it's high time to contact our support team for closer investigation. Thanks.

[andreasender6840]

I have an active Support Case [ID# 01005840].

Latest status update: "This is a not supported setup so we can´t give you any support".....

[veremin]

Don't you have a Windows-based machine at hand to which library can be connected temporarily just to find out the root cause of the experienced behaviour?

[andreasender6840]

Now we have the controller and tape connected to a windows 10 workstation.

Backup works fine last night. After a fullbackup at the weekend we can report a little bit more.

[veremin]

Hmm, I'm not even sure how well our tape server components can work with Windows 10, as they have been created at the time when the said OS wasn't available, and haven't been tested against it. Thanks.

[pkelly_sts]

What on earth is the point in consistently keeping >100Gb left on tapes?

I don't think I've EVER seen a Veeam tape with <101Gb free space left on it - why?

I've just had a backup sitting for 12hrs waiting for a tape (the backup was much larger than it should have been but I'll save that for another post/ticket) when all it had left to complete was *14Gb* and the tape that was reported "full" had 107.3Gb free space on it!!! The job even KNEW there was only 14Gb left to write as it knew the used / remaining sized/percentages.

Seriously annoying!

[veremin]

Honestly, we're not responsible for handling tape free space logic, here we rely on information returned by drive/library. So, it might be worth checking tape device firmware, patches, etc. and ask our support team for assistance, in case nothing helps. Thanks.

[pkelly_sts]

I could understand the logic if the tape is being reported as "Full" but it isn't, even Veeam is reporting the free space in 100's of GB. I don't necessarily expect every byte of space to be consumed but 100Gb in our case is generally around 4 days worth of incrementals!

[Shestakov]

Paul, I see your point. In general space left on tape depends on its vendor since different vendors have different regulations, some ask Veeam to stop writing when certain percentage is left on the tape, some when certain amount of GBs.
What is your tape vendor by the way? Is that LTO-7?
Thanks!