Veeam file to tape backup best practice

[adam900331]

Hy!

I am new with Veeam and tape library. I created a backup to local disk of Veeam server. This backup is a forever forward incremental job with 7 restore point. It means there is one .vbk file and six .vib files. I would like to create a file to tape job which archives the backup file from the disk. What is the best practice for it? And how can I schedule the file to tape job? Once a week?

The aim is that the one full backup store one tape, and so...

Thanks.

[DGrinev]

Hey,

The Virtual Full Backup was designed exactly for moving forever forward backup chains to tapes.
Feel free to ask additional questions.

Thanks!

[adam900331]

I am checking the link and I don't understand what does it mean:

The virtual full does not necessarily need to be scheduled on the day when the tape job runs. When the tape job starts, it synthesizes the source machines state as they were on the chosen day. For example, you can set Friday as the virtual full day, and schedule the tape job to run on Saturday. The tape job will not run on Friday. On Saturday, the tape job will copy blocks of data to reconstruct the state of the machines as they were on Friday (or, if no backup is available for Friday, the closest day preceding Friday).

So can I enable the Active Full backup option on the normal disk backup before I use the file to tape backup?

[DGrinev]

It means the Virtual full backup schedule isn't initiating the tape job. It only determines the source machines state inside the virtual full backup.

So can I enable the Active Full backup option on the normal disk backup before I use the file to tape backup?

Every backup starts with a full backup no matter what backup method was chosen. But if you want to utilize virtual full mechanism you shouldn't schedule periodic fulls.

[adam900331]

Sorry, but it is not clearly for me.

So I have a normal backup to local disk. It has 1 .vbk and 6 .vib files on this location: D:\Backup

The backup job configuration is:



I created a file to tape job. I selected the folder which is contain the 1 .vbk and 6 .vib files (D:\Backup) And select the "Run the full backup automatically" checkbox, and after it, run the file to tape job. When the job finished, the one of the tape include the 1 .vbk and 6 .vib. Is it normal working? Should I see only 1 .vbk which include the all of the 6 incremental backup files?

[adam900331]

It means the Virtual full backup schedule isn't initiating the tape job. It only determines the source machines state inside the virtual full backup.


Every backup starts with a full backup no matter what backup method was chosen. But if you want to utilize virtual full mechanism you shouldn't schedule periodic fulls.

Is it suitable for "File to Tape" backup?

[DGrinev]

Let's get back to the original goal:

The aim is that the one full backup store one tape, and so...

You can set up File to Tape job once a week with the source folder where the backup chain retains. In the file filter, include only the VBK file.
That is how you can get only VBK once a week on tape.

Sorry for the confusion.
Virtual full isn't suitable for File to Tape backup. Thanks!

[jround]

On a similar note...

We have F Fwd incremental jobs to disk with 14 days restore points set up

How could I set my tape job up so I have 6 months of tapes on rotation and each month of tapes would be able to restore to any individual day within that month (which also gets slightly complex as some months have 28 days, but some have up to 31 days!)

My current tape job (Backs up SOBR) works to an extent but because of the 14 disk restore points we obviously lose days when browsing through tape restores e.g. jumps from 14 days ago to 35 days ago

At the moment the singular tape job is set to run last day of every month at 23:59 but if needed we could put in the months tapes at around the halfway point in the month if that would help somehow?

[DGrinev]

Hi Jround,

Is it possible for you to have a full backup file every day on tapes? If the answer is yes then you should apply the file filter to include only the VBK file.
Otherwise, it is almost impossible to set up and will be very hard to initiate a restore.

You can achieve your goal by utilizing Backup to Tape. Thanks!