The Veeam Cookbook Series

A simple step by step no frills approach to achieving your goal

Recipe: Create a Backup to Tape Job

Expected deliverables:

A Backup to Tape Job to copy backup files to tapes and meet the 3-2-1 rule.

Time to complete: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

• You must have Veeam Backup & Replication Enterprise license or higher installed on the Veeam backup server.
• You must configure one or more media pools with the necessary media set and retention settings.
• You must load tapes to the tape device and configure the target media pool so that it has access to them.

Before you start:

The backup to tape job processes only VBK (full backups) and VIB files (forward incremental backups). If you back up to tape a reverse incremental chain, the tape job will always copy the full backup.

Assumptions:

It’s assumed that you already have a Veeam Backup Server fully working in your environment.

Method:

1. On the Home tab, click Tape Job and select Backups to tape.
2. At the Name step, specify a job name and description. Click Next.
3. At the Backups step, select backups that you want to write to tape with the tape job. Click Add and select the necessary backups. You can choose backups from Backup Jobs or Backup Repositories.
   • Veeam will display a warning informing about backup chain options. Click Latest to archive only the latest backup chain to tape. Click All to archive all available backup files.
4. At the Media Pool step choose media pool for full backups. From the Media pool list, choose a media pool that will be used for archiving full backup files. You can select a media pool or a GFS media pool depending on retention policy you need.
   • Optionally you can configure schedule for virtual full backup. This option is available only if you selected a regular media pool.
5. (Only for regular media pools) At the Incremental Backup step, select the Archive incremental backups to tape check box if you want to enable incremental backups processing.
   • From the Media pool for incremental backups list, select a media pool that will be used for incremental backups.
6. At the Optopms step, specify options for automatic operations after finishing the job
   • Select the Eject media upon job completion check box to eject the tape automatically after the job successfully finishes.
   • (For regular media pools) Select the Export current media set upon job completion check box to pull out the tapes with the current media set from the tape device.
   • (For GFS media pools) Select the Export the following media sets upon job completion check box to pull out the tapes with some media sets from the tape device. Click Media sets and select the media sets that you want to export.
7. At the Schedule step, you can define a schedule for the job to run on a regular basis.
   • (For regular media pools) If you want to run the job automatically, select the Run the job automatically check box and set the scheduling settings for the job.
   • (For GFS media pools) Click Schedule to select days for each media set. In the Perform GFS scan daily at field, specify the time when the GFS job must start.
   • Click Apply
8. At the Summary step, review details of the backup to tape job. If you want to start the job right after you close the wizard, select the Run the job when I click Finish check box, otherwise leave the check box unselected. Then click Finish to close the wizard.

Links to Resources:

• Veeam Guides and Helpcenter
• Veeam Community Forums
• Veeam Best Practices

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