Veeam + HP 1/8 Autoloader

[Treeeman]

Hello,

i have a customer with Backup Exec. After talking about Veeam he will migrate to Veeam.
My Customer has a HP 1/8 Tape Autoloader, vSphere Essentials Plus, two ESXi 5.1 and one physical Backup Server.

To Questions:
- Which Veeam Essentials License is needed for fully supporting the Tape Autoloader? I think Enterprise. Correct me if i'm wrong.
- Right now my Customer has 5 Tapes within the Autoloader (Monday to Friday). Is it possible with Veeam to copy the Backups from one Day (e. g. Monday) to a specific Slot within the Autoloader where the Tape for Monday is?

Thanks for your answers.
Kind Regards
Marco

[Dima P.]

Hello Marco,

Which Veeam Essentials License is needed for fully supporting the Tape Autoloader? I think Enterprise. Correct me if i'm wrong.

Tape libraries are supported in every Veeam version. The only difference is Enterprise edition will allow you to create additional backup to tape jobs, which are more advanced in terms of archiving your existing backups. With lower editions, you can use only file to tape job only.

Right now my Customer has 5 Tapes within the Autoloader (Monday to Friday). Is it possible with Veeam to copy the Backups from one Day (e. g. Monday) to a specific Slot within the Autoloader where the Tape for Monday is?

Unfortunately, there is no such functionality in the exising version.

[veremin]

Speaking about Enterprise, what also matters is availability of tracking mechanism of backups and restore points. With Enterprise (more specifically, "backup to tape" jobs) you will know on which tape medias particular VMs reside on, what medias are required in order to restore certain VM, etc. In case of file to tape job, you would need to go to the "Files" tab, find required file or directory and restore it.

In Enterprise you'll also get synthesized full backup and media vault functionality.

If neither of those is necessary in your case, you can stick to Standard license.

Thanks.

[Treeeman]

Thanks for your answers. Because i need the tracking mechanism v.Eremin wrote, i will go with Enterprise Version.

The fact, that i am not able to Copy the Backups from Monday to a specific Slot, where the "Monday" Tape resides, will be a little issue. I will try to talk to my customer to explain him that he will restore his VMs for 99,9% from the local Disk Backup Repository and the Tapes be just for bring Backups offsite.

[veremin]

Yep, the main idea of tapes is to guarantee long-term retention. In overwhelming majority of cases local backups would be enough and tapes would be used in cases when either local backups are lost or you need to restore a really old point. Thanks.