VBM data to tape

[rasmusan]

Hi,

I have a case with VBM installation with around ~70TB of VBM data (and growing) - currently data just landing on NTFS volume.

We would like to utilize an existing tape solution, to periodically (fx. weekly) move VBM data to tape... Not keeping tapes for longs time, but maybe just 2 or 3 sets of tapes, as retention lies within VBM backup - this is just to protect data/retention in case of server/disk failure etc.

Some options I see:

- Create multiple volumes smaller than 64TB, and utilize Veeam Agent backup to backup those volumes - and then copy to tape...

- Deploy VM with fx. MinIO, present storage as S3 to VBM, and do VBM backup to this - afterwards do snapshot-based VM backup of this S3 appliance (while VBM jobs not running), and lastly copy to tape.


I see a few options, but would like to hear what others do with success

[Mildur]

Hi Rasmus

Have you considered to switch completely object storage and use backup copy jobs to immutable object storage.
Or is Tape a business requirement?

I see the following benefits of an object storage only design:

- I wouldn't use Tape for only 3 weeks. The restore process from Tape is not just a single step process and RTO times are expected to be high (to restore 70TB).
- With Object Storage repositories, you can save almost 40-50% of storage because of better compression. Instead of 70TB, the same restore points would only consume 40-50TB space.
- Object Storage provides you a more stable and reliable experience than jet databases. Especially for this size of environment we always recommend object storage.
- Object Storage allows you to copy your restore points to a secondary location immediately. Worst case with weekly tapes, you would loose 1 week of backups. This won't happen with Object Storage repositories because they are copied directly after the backup job has finished.
- Object Storage gives you immutable copies of your backups (in our upcoming version v8 also for backup jobs)
- Another V8 feature: We will introduce a new concept called proxy pools (an "object storage repository" only feature). Proxy pools will help your backup server to better scale with environments like yours. Multiple proxies will be able to write to the same object storage bucket. You need more processing power because you have a large amount of new objects to backup? Just add temporarily a new proxy to the configuration until the objects are protected.

You can use our calculator for a estimation of the amount of object storage you will need:
https://www.veeam.com/calculators/simple/saas/m365

V8 will make it easier to migrate your 70TB to an object storage repository. I don't recommend to start the migration today with version 7.

Best,
Fabian