[VHRISO] restore tape to Hardened Repository

[WoenK]

Moderator split from veeam-backup-replication-f2/managed-har ... 96192.html

Planning on getting two hardened repos next year (one for on-prem and one for off-site).
Is there a way to move old tape backups to the repos ?
Havened done it in a while, but I remember that normal repos ones I could simply create a SOBR and move them to the new extent.
Is there a way to do the same with tape backups ?

[HannesK]

Hello,
I cannot follow what SOBR (extents) have to do with moving tape backups, but I try to answer how things work in general

1) With SOBR, we enforce consistent immutability settings within SOBR since 12.1
2) restores from tape can be done to any repository
3) "move backups" exists only from disk-based media, not from tape
4) Hardened Repository installed with Hardened Repository ISO behaves the same like a Hardened Repository installed on a customer-managed Linux.

I guess it's easier to answer if you describe what the situation and the goal is.

Best regards
Hannes

[WoenK]

I am trying to get those monthly and yearly tape backups in an immutable storage and have the correct expiration dates
Temporary storing the tape backups on disk would not be an issue.

Overall I want to get rid of that single tape drive and the daily swapping and have 3-2-1-1 backup

[HannesK]

It feels like you need the following: set retention and immutable time to imported backups. As of today, these backups inherit only the configured immutability days from the repository settings, but not the GFS immutability / retention settings that existed for tape.

I don't see built-in functionality for such a scenario because immutability / retention times are tied to backup jobs. If one restores from tape to Hardened Repository, then the backups are there, but without retention / GFS immutability. One ugly workaround comes into my mind:
1) set immutability to whatever number of years you need for the yearly tape
2) restore that yearly tapes
3) set immutability to whatever number of months you need for the monthly tapes
4) restore monthly tapes
5) continue that until everything is on Hardened Repository

Once a month go to "disk (imported)" (or script it) and mark all backups and delete them. Immutable backups will fail to delete.

[WoenK]

Thank you Hannes, does not sound like an ugly workaround to me:D

Would be a nice feature though if one could import backups and set retention on the immutable storage once during storing.