Keeping track of VMs dumped to tape

[donb123]

We currently use Veeam to replicate a couple of VMs between sites. this works well for us. We are now looking at expanding Veeam's purpose with backing up our entire virtual infrastructure. (I am running some tests with a small number of VMs now)

For compliance reasons I have to dump all backups to tape and store those tapes offsite.

I'd like to dump to tape once a week only - not after every job as this topic http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5819>topic suggests. Ideally I'd like only the files created in the last week BUT I would accept backing up the entire Veeam repository on a weekly basis (I have multiple robots so they should handle the load).

However, and MOST important, I'm a little bit in the dark as to understand what VMs are on any given Veeam backup set on tape, specifically as it applies to our dev environment. Let me explain.

Our dev environment is very dynamic so I use an automatic selection selection list. One scenario is we employ a number of consultants on our ERP system. When a consultant comes in, we provision a VM for them to work with during their contract period. Once they have submitted their work and their code passes through QA and into production we delete the consultant's VM. There are times, albeit rare, where we need to restore that VM weeks after it's been deleted for any number of reasons.

And we my get to my question. How would I know what Veeam backup repository file(s) I need to restore in order to restore a VM that was named "consult099" without knowing the exact time period or original vShere host etc...? (To be completely clear, we build, rebuild and delete guests in DEV on an ongoing basis which is why I use an automatic selection list. Stuff changes so fast that I may not even be aware a guest exists before it gets deleted)

[Gostev]

Hi Donald, for that you just need to lookup the VM name in the Enterprise Manager (on the VMs tab). It will give you the backup file names you need to get from tape in order to be able to restore the required VM. Thanks!

[donb123]

Thanks for the replly - I guess its time to install enterprise manger then.

[cleight]

I don't mean to threadjack, but I'm having an issue similar to the OP. I cannot find the Veeam Backup file names anywhere inside Enterprise Manager, Gostev can you please provide more detail where one might find this information?

[Gostev]

Hi Chris, sure!
1. Go to Files tab.
2. Select VM.
3. Select required restore point.
4. Click Backup file info link next to it.
5. The dialog will popup with the information you are looking for.
Hope this helps.

[cleight]

Hi Chris, sure!
1. Go to Files tab.
2. Select VM.
3. Select required restore point.
4. Click Backup file info link next to it.
5. The dialog will popup with the information you are looking for.
Hope this helps.

Gostev,

I understand the process of looking at the VM file names, however my list of VM's isn't complete, not sure how to make all my VM's visible to Enterprise Manager. They were all there before the Version 6 upgrade.

Thanks,
Chris

[Gostev]

Then you should open a support case.

[cleight]

Gostev,

I have opened a support case, however support sucks from Veeam! I opened the case on Monday and no one has called me since. I called in yesterday trying to get a hold of my support yep, he was unavailable so I got another yep that basically told me he couldn't help me because the case was assigned to someone else. When I asked why I haven't received any communication about the request he said we are currently busy with a lot of Version 6 support cases. My case is a severity 1 and after talking to that rep he lowered it to a 2.

Support case #: 5168457

Sincerely,
Chris

[Gostev]

Hi Chris,

For the support case you have referenced, I can see that there was 2 emails sent to you - 1 hour 50 minutes after you open a support case, support engineer requested your phone number. The 2nd email was sent 11 minutes after that, and explained the process of restoring a tape backup. So it's not like there was zero communication since Monday (which is how your post above reads). However, I do see one area of concern regarding further communication, and I will send this to our support management for review.

Whenever you are not happy with support provided, it is always best to simply request a callback from support manager. They will be able to address any of your concerns momentarily. They will not know there is a problem until you tell them! Thanks.

[htwnrva]

I'm running into the same issue in our environment. I understand how to look up VMs in enterprise manager and that works great for recent backups. Where I run into issue is when I storage vMotion a VM to another datastore. Let's say I take a backup on 11/1/2011 when VM1 was on datastore01 and it gets dumped to tape. I have to move VM1 to datastore02 on 11/31/2011. Now it's 1/25/2012 and I need a restore of VM1 from 11/15/2011. Enterprise Manager is going to say it's in the backup for datastore02 when at the time it was on datastore01.

I understand this isn't a Veeam issue but I was hoping for guidance from other people that are required to deal with tape. The only thing I can think of is to keep a log of storage vmotions and use that to map where a VM has been for the past year.


---To clarify this a bit: We create our backup jobs per datastore rather than per VM. We currently have over 600 VMs being backed up by Veeam.

[dellock6]

Why don't you separate your backup jobs based on something else than datastores? I've used many times resource pools as backup units, especially in multi-tenant environment where different resource pools map to different users (also useful for veeam restore permissions).

Luca.

[chrisdearden]

The main reason for using datastores as a job definition is as an insurance policy against excessive snapshot growth - by using the DS as the job definition , you will only have one open snapshot per datastore per job.

[dellock6]

I see your point, but this is a problem if we have already overprovisioned datastores. If datastore load has been kept to a good valure (70-80% as reccommended by VMware) this would not be a problem. We managed to limit this problem by setting different datastores to different proxies so there is fewwer chances same jobs will run on the same datastores.
Maybe a RFE should be to limit the cuncurrent tasks also per datastore and not only by proxy.

Luca.

[kevinnaughton]

[merged]

I have B&R Enterprise, have guest file system indexing enabled, perform my Veeam backup, and then use BackupExec to dupe that to tape.

My retention policy for tapes is to keep daily incrementals for a week, weekly fulls for a month, monthly fulls for a year.

So, I can use Enterprise Manager to find a file I'm looking for. The problem is, it keeps in the index every restore point, even those for tapes that have been overwritten. Anyone have a technique for easily finding the tape I need to recall in order to restore a file I've located in Enterprise Manager?

The easiest way I've found is to:
- Search for the file in Veeam Enterprise Manager
- Click the link for the file, make a note of the restore point
- Go back to Enterprise Manager and Browse
- Pick the restore point from above
- Click "Backup info" and get vbk file name
- Go to Backup Exec and search for the vbk file name

Now, the problem is, I may have to go through the above process numerous times until I find a .vbk file that is on a tape that is still on retention and hasn't been overwritten yet.

Am I overlooking an easier way to do this? Any input would be appreciated.

[kevinnaughton]

Oh, and as a suggestion to Veeam, could I please get the .vbk file name when I search for a file instead of just the restore point name? I can't run a search in Backup Exec for the restore point name, so I have to go through the extra steps of then finding the actual file name. That would at least save me a couple steps.

Or, even better, support tape offload within your product I know that's in the works.

Even a way of deprecating the index in Enterprise manager would be helpful. If I could set a retention schedule for the index files that matched my tape retention schedule, that would help quite a bit.

[kevinnaughton]

Hi Chris, sure!
1. Go to Files tab.
2. Select VM.
3. Select required restore point.
4. Click Backup file info link next to it.
5. The dialog will popup with the information you are looking for.
Hope this helps.

This is not working for me. The dialog popup says only:

File can be restored from the following backups
Backup Server | Backup Name

And backup name is just the name of the job, not the file for that restore point.

[Gostev]

Can you post a screenshot?

[kevinnaughton]

[Gostev]

Well, this means that the required backup is still available on disk, meaning you don't even need to look it up by name on tapes. Instead, you just go to said backup server, right-click said backup job, and initiate the restore.

[kevinnaughton]

Well, this means that the required backup is still available on disk, meaning you don't even need to look it up by name on tapes. Instead, you just go to said backup server, right-click said backup job, and initiate the restore.

Hmmm, ok. I'll check that tomorrow since I just turned on indexing last week and they haven't fallen out of retention yet but should tonight.

However, how would I look up the backup file for a job that did not have indexing enabled? For example, I backed up some VMs a few weeks ago. The jobs show up in the reports tab showing that the jobs were succesful. But these are no longer on disk. How do I find the backup file name so I can search for the tape? I don't see it anywhere. I can't understand why it's so hard to find this basic and critical piece of information.

[Gostev]

Well, if you do not perform indexing, then nothing gets catalogued in our database, and so you cannot look up these details.
We will have native tape support in our next major release, so user experience around tapes will be much streamlined there.