VEEAM features for backing up from disk to tape

[AshenOne]

Hello,

I'm currently looking at VEEAM for a possible backup implementation for work to modernize some dated backup systems. I'm currently doing some research and am trying to wrap my head around a few things, I was wondering anyone might be able to point me in the right direction? Currently we use DPM 2012 to manage backups with the schedule working as the following:

1. All data is backed up to a disk share provided by a SAN via iSCSI. Data snapshots taken incrementally every day every 6 hours for the business week from Monday to Friday. The data is currently that of physical machines and servers running some legacy software.
2. A final full backup is performed to disk for all data on Friday night in order to consolidate the working week's data at night.
3. The full backup is then pushed to tape for offsite and storage on the weekends.
4. Tape is the offsite to another location the following week as a means to provide an air gap.

The system works well enough but we're looking at possibly backing up Synology NAS and VMWare with Cisco Hyperflex which DPM doesn't seem to support. I had a look at VEEAM and it seems support what we want to do but it also does things a bit differently from DPM in terms of workflow. There seems to be an option to configure tapes for GFS scheme and then there's an option to write a backup job to tape. In DPM everything seems to be handled seamlessly, is there perhaps a feature or an option in VEEAM which can replicate this workflow or would configuration have to be between the two which is more involved?

Thanks for reading.

[Mildur]

Hi Ashen

There seems to be an option to configure tapes for GFS scheme and then there's an option to write a backup job to tape.

GFS Tapes and Backup Job to Tape is the same thing. It's a Backup to Tape job which uses a GFS Media Pool.

To fulfill you goal, with Veeam you would configure:

Primary Backup:
1. Create a Backup Job for physical machines to Disk
2. Create a Backup Job for VMWare machines to Disk
3. Create a File Share Backup Job for Synology Files to Disk

Tape for physical and VmWare machines:
1. Create a Backup to Tape Job with a GFS Media pool
--> Configure weekly backups overwrite protection in the GFS Media pool properties.
--> Configure weekly schedule for the Tape Job to Saturday (after Fridays full backup). Veeam will write a full backup to the weekly tape.

Tape for File Share Backups:
1. Create a Backup to Tape Job with a regular Media Pool
--> Configure schedule for the Tape Job and virtual full backup schedule to Friday. Veeam will write a full backup of NAS data to tape.
--> File Share do not allow GFS Media pools yet.

Best,
Fabian

[AshenOne]

Hi Mildur,

Thanks for getting back to me. After with some playing around I managed to get it working. I proceeded to backup up the VMs and test the restore with the SureBackup job but from what I can see, it causes a dirty restore where an "unexpected shutdown event" is triggered on the VMs (Domain Controller and Exchange Server). I'm running the backup under VEEAM with the VM backup option and have enabled Application Aware processing. This occurs both with full backup and snapshotted backup testing. Is this normal or is there perhaps something I'm missing that might cause it to not commit changes via VSS before backup?

Thanks,

AshenOne