Backup to Tape Question

[robc.yk]

Good Day Folks,

I am currently using a Physical box for Veeam B&R (Latest Version) to backup my vSphere enviornment (Latest Version).
The enviornment consists of an HP EVA wit active / active paths using about 30 TB of storage for the VM's presented through 14 Luns.
The vCenter server is virtual. We have about 250 VM's.

The Veeam server backups to the same EVA on a seperate assigned LUN.
Veeam is using reverse incrementals. There are 11 Seperate Veeam jobs scheduled throughout the Day & Night.
I would like to use one job for the disk to tape process.

I have the following questions when using seperate software (HP DataPortector 6.22) on the Physical VEEAM server to get the files to tape:

1 - If the tape process runs and Veeam is currently running a job, what happens to the full backup file, is it useable? Will it become corrupt?
2 - Is the full backup file created all at once, or is it when each VM is finished its backup within the job?
3 - Is there any need to get the incremental files to tape?

Thank you for your time.

Rob C.

[Gostev]

1 - If the tape process runs and Veeam is currently running a job, what happens to the full backup file, is it useable? Will it become corrupt?
2 - Is the full backup file created all at once, or is it when each VM is finished its backup within the job?
3 - Is there any need to get the incremental files to tape?

Hi Rob,

1. Tape process will simply be unable to pick up a backup file, because the file will be locked for write.

2. Write lock is removed from backup file once all VMs in the job are processed. File cannot be read while write lock is in place.

3. Not sure what are you saying here? The answer depends on your own needs I guess. If you need daily incremental backup on tape then you should do this. If weekly fulls are sufficient for you, then don't tape daily increments. I've seen people doing both. I even seen people sending only monthly fulls to tape. It all depends on specific company's policies and requirements.

Please be sure to search forum for (multiple) existing discussions on tape integration and related questions.

Thanks!