Improve tape job configuration

[matteu]

Hello,

The setup is :
VSA on 13.1 last build
10 Backup to object reposiroty (All VM are backup 1/day) (start from 8PM to 2 AM)
10 backup copy to Veeam infrastructure appliance (linux hardened)
1 Backup to tape (1 Quantum library i3 scalar 2 drive LTO8 + GFS used with 7daily + 4 weekly (sunday) + 12 monthly (3rd day of the month) and Parallel processing is enabled for 2 drives.). This backup to tape job includes all backup jobs. This jobs is executed at 3AM after I'm sure all backup job completed.

There is arround 37TB for the full
It takes more than 24H at least to backup. (It's arround 250MB/s it's arround 22TB/day)

1) Is there a way to have the weekly + monthly on the same tape or not ? Bacause now, I have monthly + weekly on different days today...

2) My backup to tape jobs are cancelled because : " Synthetic full Stopped by job 'Foreign transform' (Transform)". That means if I understand correctly the next backup job is executing and it causes the tape to job to crash because I don't want to check "Prevent this job from being interrupted by source backup jobs" on my tape jobs because I want my backup job RPO 24H to always be compliant. Is there a technical solution for it or I just need to add more drive/ library to be able to reduce the backup to tape windows ?

[david.domask]

Hi matteu,

1. Not with GFS -- GFS media pools don't let you split tapes like that, a tape in the Monthly GFS media set will only be taken for Monthly GFS runs

2. I would get a support case to confirm what actually is happening there; Foreign transform if I remember right is a synthetic full / merging process on the source job, but I had thought we have handling to ensure that tape job waits for such items.

> It takes more than 24H at least to backup. (It's arround 250MB/s it's arround 22TB/day)

That seems a bit slow; that's 250 MB/s per drive or 250 MB/s for both drives? The theoretical max per LTO8 drive is 360 MB/s but usually I see closer to 300 - 330 range, so I would expect your daily throughput ought be in the 600 - 660 MB/s range.

Regardless, I would recommend a Support case first to investigate the total speed and to confirm what's triggering the tape job stop with foreign transform. It's possible that the tape job is taking long enough that by the time the primary job runs again it triggers a synthetic operation and breaks the tape job lock, but still best to confirm with a Support case.

Similarly, on "Prevent this job from being interrupted" option, i actually suspect you can probably use it without too much interruption to the source jobs. I would recommend testing it, it may help.