Veeam BR Tape Backup

[mcdaniels]

Hi folks,

I just try to implement Backup to tape. As I recognized now, I am unsure whether I understood things right.

Will Veeam B&R always do only full backups in GFS mode and will I have to use the standardmode for the following?

My plan would be to do backups to tape from previous done backup to disc jobs:
Full backups on every Monday (Tape with about 12TB - LTO8)
and incrementals on Tuesday - Friday (Tape with about 7TB - LTO7)

Is this realizeable with Veeam B&R Tape backup, or will I have to overthink everything?

Thanks!

[david.domask]

Hi @mcdaniels,

Sure, it's pretty easily doable.

With Standard Media Pools, the behavior of the Tape job has some dependency based on the source backup Retention Method Policies: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

Forever Forward Incremental (FFI): Source job doesn't produce regular full backups; in this mode, the Tape Backup will create periodic Virtual Full Backups; these do not need space on disk, and instead are Full Backups synthesized during the job run and placed directly on tape. Likely this is what you want, and just configure Monday as your Virtual Full day
Forward Incremental (FI): Source job produces full backups on a regular schedule, so tape job will just move whatever is on disk to tape, Fulls and Increments included (assuming you have enabled the incremental backup option on the tape job).
Reverse Incremental (RI): Source job always has a Full backup as the most recent point, so we will always back that up to tape

Can you tell which Retention Policy you use? If it's FFI, then just set the schedule for the Virtual Full as defined here: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120 The tape job will use the most applicable restore point to make a Full backup to Tape on that day.

If it's FI, then the Full will be written to tape on the next run after the full has been written to disk by the source job.

Does it help?

[mcdaniels]

Hi,
thanks.

We have FI if I judge this right: Backupsettings (Advanced) - Incremental with "Create synthetic full backups periodically" -> set on Saturday

Source job produces full backups on a regular schedule, so tape job will just move whatever is on disk to tape, Fulls and Increments included

This means if we go with FI there will always be all data (from disk) on every single tape?
Is there a way to say: Monday -> Fullbackup to tape and Tuesday till Friday incremental to tape / Will I have to set the full backup to tape on Saturday, as this is the day we create the synthetic full via FI?

Or will it be the better option to switch to FFI?

And would you suggest standard backup mode or GFS for storing tapebackups 6 month into the past?

[mcdaniels]

cannot edit my prev. post anymore: Forget about the 6 month.

but what about:

And would you suggest standard backup mode or GFS for storing tapebackups for 1 year (12 Full Backups) with additionally the actually running month -> 1 weekly full & 4 daily incrementals

[david.domask]

Got it, yes, looks like you have Forward Incremental (FI) backups.

> This means if we go with FI there will always be all data (from disk) on every single tape?

Not quite, Backup to Tape doesn't re-backup files unless:

1. The file has been altered unexpectedly (this should not happen in most cases as Tape backup is aware of the changes made by the source job like merging)
2. The tapes holding the previously written data are Erased, Marked as Free, or Removed from Catalog.

> Is there a way to say: Monday -> Fullbackup to tape and Tuesday till Friday incremental to tape / Will I have to set the full backup to tape on Saturday, as this is the day we create the synthetic full via FI?

The latter; with the exception of Virtual Fulls, Backup to Tape jobs just move whatever is on the repository to tape; Virtual Fulls are needed because with Forever Forward (FFI), the Full backup at the beginning of the chain is constantly having data merged in/out of it during retention, and the incremental files might eventually end up in a situation where they depend on data which is no longer in the full backup (on tape), so the Virtual Full creates a natural "starting point" that the increments can link to.

> Will I have to set the full backup to tape on Saturday, as this is the day we create the synthetic full via FI?

It's up to you You can leave the Tape job schedule "as is", and it will just grab what's on disk.

To illustrate this, let's assume a simple Source Job that makes Periodic fulls every Saturday (like in your setup).

The tape job is Simple Media Pool that backs up both fulls + Increments, and the tape job runs on the weekdays.

On the first Tape job run, on disk, the source backup chain looks like this: (F = Full, i = increment. Let's assume source job runs once per day for this example):

F1 i i i i i i F2 i i
Sat Sun M............Sat2 Sun2 M2

Tape job is configured to backup "only the latest chain", so that second Full and its increments are the starting point.

1st Tape job run happens on a Monday after the source job makes an increment; it will backup:

F2, i2, i2

Tuesday comes and the source job makes an increment; tape job runs and backs up that increment, and this process repeats until the weekend when tape job doesn't run.

The next Monday comes and the source chain looks like this:

F1 i i i i i i F2 i i i i i i F3 i i

Since F2's chain is already on tape, it won't re-backup anything, and instead will look for what is on repository that isn't yet on tape and should be backed up, it will find F3 and its increments, and move those to tape during the tape run on Monday.

(Note: the "Latest Chain" item you choose when adding source jobs just tells whether we care about the previous backup chains on disk that exist, or only the latest chain during the first run; basically, it sets the minimum date that the backups should have been created on or after for the tape job to use as a filter)

Does this make a bit more sense?

> And would you suggest standard backup mode or GFS for storing tapebackups 6 month into the past?

Both can work just fine, it's largely a matter of preference. GFS's big advantage is you don't have to worry about what the source chain makes; excepting the Daily media set for GFS, Tape GFS always makes a full backup on tape to correspond to the relevant GFS period. If the source job makes a Full backup, the GFS job will just copy the full backup. If the source job makes an increment, the GFS tape job will synthesize a Virtual Full to tape from that increment.

I've seen it used both ways to good effect, and it's mostly just dependent on your preference and tape out needs. Tape GFS is a bit better at being "set and forget" in my opinion.

[david.domask]

BTW< I guess I should add that while the above "seems" complex, really most of this you don't need to know a ton about when setting up Backup to Tape with Veeam. This is just a very detailed breakdown of what the job does behind the scenes so that you can understand step by step what it's doing; the only real consideration is just "To GFS or not to GFS", and the rest is handled pretty much automatically.

[mcdaniels]

Hi and thanks a lot for your support,

well I think I will try to go with a simple non GFS Job -> Standardjob.
Keep Data for 6 weeks for the start.
I set up a media-pool which creates a new set for every session.
I activated use only latest chain
First full backup set to tomorrow (cause I have to test whether it works or not)
Start after the last backupjob is finished

Only thing which is not 100% clear (full backup-logic will be):
Veeam backs up the VMs at scheduled time.
Tomorrow it backs up all data (Full Backup) to tape and only backs up the latest chain. Means Data from last Saturday (FULL) and its increments (from today)
On Wednesday it makes an increment.
Same (increment) for Thursday and Friday.
On the weekends it is not backing up to tape cause there is no backup scheduled, but Veeam creates a synthetic Full on saturday

This goes on till the next Tuesday where the next (latest) backupchain is backed up to tape.

So Veeam will backup on and on.

And here comes what is not entirely clear for me:
When I can use a already used backup tape again?
How do I know which tape I can use for the next day, when all my backup tapes (for the 6 weeks of keeping the data on the tape) can be reused!

Thanks again for your patience and support?

[david.domask]

Glad I can help so far, and sure I can comment on the rest:

> On the weekends it is not backing up to tape cause there is no backup scheduled, but Veeam creates a synthetic Full on saturday

Not quite in this case. On the weekend, tape job will do nothing; Virtual Fulls are only engaged if the source job is Forever Forward Incremental (FFI); in your case, you don't need to worry about Virtual Fulls. On the following Monday, it will get the Full made by the source job on Saturday, as well as the increments made on Sunday and Monday*.

*Presuming that the tape job runs after source job on Monday

>When I can use a already used backup tape again?
How do I know which tape I can use for the next day, when all my backup tapes (for the 6 weeks of keeping the data on the tape) can be reused!

Tape protection starts under two conditions:

1. From the point of the last write to the tape before it's marked as "Full"; the end of that tape session is when the Protection period of 6 weeks starts counting
2. From the point that a tape's media set is closed

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

So If the media set closes today (2023-05-22 16:30 UTC+1), the tape protection period ends on Monday, 03 July 2023 16:30:24, and veeam will consider the tape "Expired" at that point and available for overwrite.

[mcdaniels]

Good morning,

well we will try to start today.
For testing purposes (to have a full tape backup to start), we well create a full tape backup today and do increments till friday.

My plan is to append the increments to only one tape per week. So we have a LTO8 for monday (FULL) and a LTO7 for tuesday to friday.

If this works, I will switch the full backup to monday, followed by increments till friday.

We will go with standard media sets and create a new media set each monday at 00:01 am. Veeam backup to disc starts every weekday at 18:00 till about 22:00h. The tapejob is scheduled after the last backup to disc run is finished. Do you think that is ok, or would you suggest another media set setting (cause we have only one tape drive and have to manually swap tapes every day at the moment - using Arcserve Tape Backup).

After the backup of the Veeambackupfiles (from disc), we also have a Filecopy to Tape (for "not Veeam files" situated on the backupserver) scheduled at 01:00am.

I hope that all this is working together and my settings wont interfere each other (especially the "create a new set each monday" in combination with the file copy to tape).