Scenario 5: GFS tape archiving
Infrastructure: Medium to large infrastructure (100 or more VMs)
Policies: New tapes are loaded and used tapes are exported after GFS point creation
How it works: if you create a GFS media pool and point a tape job to use it, the tape job will create only full backups using GFS logic (weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly) backups and keep them for defined period.
GFS tape job starts at 0.00 of the day when full backup is scheduled. It then waits for the source job to create a new restore point. If new restore point is incremental, tape job will create a virtual synthetic full on tape. If it is a full, that point will be copied to tape. If no new point is created for 24 hours, tape job will take the previous available point.
Recommended settings:
| Entity | Configuration settings |
|---|---|
| Media pool | Create a GFS media pool. GFS media pool does not support incremental backups, only fulls |
| Media pool (retention) | On the GFS media set step you need to set protective period of weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly points. For example, if you set Weekly protective period to 4 weeks, you will have 4 full points on the tapes and after 4 weeks oldest tape will be overwritten. Same GFS point can serve for several periods at the same time (weekly, monthly etc.). In this case the retention will be determined by senior period. |
| Media set | GFS creates a separate media set for each period (weekly, monthly etc). Tapes used in weekly GFS will not be used in other media sets and vice versa, even if retention has expired. For example, monthly GFS point will not be saved on tape previously used for weekly GFS point. On GFS media set if you click on Advanced button you can see and manage tapes in each media set. To make job use separate tapes for each backup session (for better separation) do not select “Append backup files to incomplete tapes” |
| Source (backup job) | Backup job using any backup mode or backup copy job. BCJshould have copy interval of 1 day or less, minimum 4 points retention is required |
| Tape job | Export current media set.. should be enabled for all GFS periods |
| Scheduling | 1. For backup job make sure that it runs close to 0.00 of the GFS day, otherwise the tape job will remain idle for long time 2. Backup copy job with sync period of 1 day or less. Keep in mind that last point in BCJ is always locked, so tape job will remain idle until 2 points after 0.00 of GFS day are created. |
| Retries | If some of tasks for GFS job fail, they will be retried each hour for 48 hours. If job was unable to create a point for some of the tasks, GFS job will try to create point for skipped period during next runs for time, equal to two skipped periods for this point (for example, a skipped monthly point will be retied for 2 months during each run). If that is not desirable (for example, source job does not have points for that period), you can disable and reenable the tape job to discart the planned retries |
You can use several registry tweaks to change the default behaviour of GFS tape job. All DWORDs must be added to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication\ on Veeam server (restart backup service to apply):
TapeGFSBackupWaitTimeout
By default, tape job will wait for 1440 minutes (1 day) for a new point before using existing one. Set this DWORD to 0 to make tape job use existing point immediately.
TapeWaitForActiveStorageTimeoutInHours
When BCJ creates new point, it remains locked till the next sync interval. Set this value to 0 to make tape job use previous point immediately.