v8 - backup to tape strategy

[Legio]

Hi,

We migrated to Veeam Backup and replication but I have some questions about the backup to tape.

This is what we currently have:

Backup to disk:
- daily backup : active full backup on Tuesday and the other days incremental. Retention policy : 14 restore points on disk (these are servers with daily changes)
- weekly backup : active full backup on Saturday on weekly basis. Retention policy : 14 restore points on disk (servers with only a few changes)

The idea is to perform restores, in 90% of the cases, from disk. If - exceptionally - a restore is needed from e.g. 5 weeks ago => We would like to be able to restore from tape. Another reason to use tape is to have an alternative when the disk backup solution has crashed.

=> we have a server with an internal tape drive (1 tape - no library) and we keep the tapes external
=> We have 10 tapes, and we can put 7 daily backups and 1 weekly backup on 1 tape.
=> Idea is to 'rotate' these 10 tapes in 10 weeks (each week another tape)

My question :

How should I configure this in Veeam?
- I configured backup to tape as secondary target
- I have 1 custom media pool with the 10 tapes in it. Retention is 'protect data for 9 weeks'. Media set is 'do not create, always continue using current media set'
- new tape is inserted on Tuesday (and active full backup is also on Tuesday). So I should always have a full backup and 6 incremental backups on 1 tape

=> should I use multiple media pools in this case? I read about this, but I don't think I need multiple media pools
=> when I insert a tape from 10 weeks ago, and when I perform an inventory, I get the error 'cannot inventory tape, unknown media'. When I perform an erase I can inventory the drive. Is this logical behaviour?
=> Media set : I read the user guide, but I don't really know how I should configure this. How should this be configured in my setup ?

Thanks for your help!

[Shestakov]

Hi Legio,
Do you backup same VMs by 2 jobs? If yes, it`s better to use backup + backup copy job with GFS retention for weekly backups.

Regarding tapes,

=> We have 10 tapes, and we can put 7 daily backups and 1 weekly backup on 1 tape.
=> Idea is to 'rotate' these 10 tapes in 10 weeks (each week another tape)

It is possible, you need to make Create a new media set once a week, and retention should be 10 weeks, as you said.
Make sure you have enough tapes though. You may just not set the retention and tapes will be used one by one.
Thanks!

[Legio]

Hi,

ok, thanks for your reply.

Beside these answers, you know by any chance what could be the cause of this error when performing an inventory :
Cannot inventory tape in drive 1 (drive id : tape0). Unknown media (possibly in use by another application)

Tape was written 10 weeks ago, but I think I should be able to perform at least an inventory ?

Thanks!

[Shestakov]

Try to erase medium using drive manufacture native tool and see whether it can be invetoried and used successfully afterwards.

[Legio]

Try to erase medium using drive manufacture native tool and see whether it can be invetoried and used successfully afterwards.

when I'm trying to perform a quick erase (through Veeam), and an inventory afterwards => this is working without any problem.

The problem is I always have to erase a previously written tape, in order to perform an inventory / backup up to it.

I should be able to restore from this tape, but I even can't perform an inventory...

Regards,

Gijs

[Shestakov]

As far as I`m concerned you don`t need to erase them every time if you use all the tapes within the same tape server. Were they used by another server before?

[Legio]

No, but they were used on the same server by another backup solution (Backup Exec).

The first time the tape was used by Veeam, I had to perform an erase in Veeam (which was logical in a way). But now all tapes have been erased an used by Veeam and I still have to perform an erase before I can even do an inventory...

[Shestakov]

You just need to erase once after they were used by Backup Exec to inventory them in VBR.
Can you check whether there are no BE remnants that might prevent VB&R from working properly with the said device, such as drivers, running services, etc.?