Veeam software and inventory/cataloging of tapes

[FatBoy]

Hi all,

 

Wondering if anyone can help, we have just moved our tape backups over to Veeam from Backup exec and tape management is slightly different!! I used to inventory then label tapes in BKUPEXEC (linking the written label with the electronic label in BKUPEXEC) and then once used I could remove and at any point re-add that tape, inventory it and it would show back up as the same tape, however I'm not finding the same thing in Veeam

 

Firstly I don't see how you properly label tapes and maybe this is wear all my problems lie. The only way I can see to label tapes is to right click a slot to go to the properties of a tape and change the name there but I'm unsure if this is the correct way of doing it.

 

We have a 8 tape Quantum Superloader 3 LTO6, slot 8 is for cleaning. I have normal tape in the other 7 slots. For example this month when two tapes were used I removed them (which is always a random two tapes it selects!) and inserted two new ones. Inventoried the tapes relabelled them after the slot name (which is a temporary name) . To check if all was sinking up I ejected the magazine swapped tapes 2 and 7 put it back in and ran another inventory. Problem is Tape 2 showed up fine but Tape 7 was shown as tape 9 unrecognised!!

 

Any idea what I am doing wrong? How do you label/managed tapes correct in this software?

[howartp]

You've probably had your answer elsewhere by now, but the answer to this is to use barcode labels. I had the same query when I moved from BackupExec to Veeam a year or so ago, but now everything is barcoded everything just works.

[FatBoy]

Not really had anyone 100% say barcodes helped, I might have to look into it. Do you need to use a specfic type? Where do you get yours from? Once the tapes have barcoded names can you still give them a friendly name 'Nov 2015' or something or are they all just called after the barcode number?

[Davit2005]

We find bar codes do help if your autochanger has the facility. We use LTO6 tapes and the labels are in colour.

 

In preference I'd order pre-printed ready to stick direct to tapes, we been using tape function in Veeam since it was launched in version 7 and it seems reliable as long as the labels are of good quality.

 

i.e we have configured a media pool which appends Monthly and then the date but you can always add a description to the tape manually afterwards.

[howartp]

Not really had anyone 100% say barcodes helped, I might have to look into it. Do you need to use a specfic type? Where do you get yours from? Once the tapes have barcoded names can you still give them a friendly name 'Nov 2015' or something or are they all just called after the barcode number?

I use Netc Europe The Media Barcode Specialists for labels. Next day turn-around and very friendly, very good ordering and checking process.

 

I used to do very much as you do, and it took me a long time to get away from the mindset of manually labelling tapes. Now that Veeam manages them, and tells me which media pool they're in, I don't worry any more. Yes, I put the five 'Nov 2015' tapes into one pile/box with a postit note and rubber band just to speed up finding them in the cupboard when I need to restore, but I don't label each tape.

 

I'm just now looking at a Tape Library as my IBM autoloader is dying and I'm increasing my backup/archive storage - this will mean I rarely take most tapes out of the library, so I will always rely on the barcodes.

 

LTO6 for VM images, and LTO5 for data backups.

 

Peter

[howartp]

In preference I'd order pre-printed ready to stick direct to tapes

Yes, I was determined we could do a better job in-house with Avery labels, barcode font and software.

 

Persevered for about a month then gave up when the Christmas backup failed because it couldn't read 3 of the barcode labels during the new-year shutdown period.

[Davit2005]

Yes, I was determined we could do a better job in-house with Avery labels, barcode font and software.

 

Persevered for about a month then gave up when the Christmas backup failed because it couldn't read 3 of the barcode labels during the new-year shutdown period.

 

Yep we print batches of 10 ourselves and up to 4 don't get recognized meaning a reprint. I'd def go for pre-printed professional labels from an outside that you just stick on.

[penfold]

To be honest I've always had issues with the tape bit of veeam. It works but I've had to fight with it when it comes round to recognising tapes again for the next month. The main problem I have had though is that when running an inventory it looks like the tape library goes "off-line". I've been going back and too with Veeam support and I have just installed the latest patch ver2 (not yet released) and it seems to have done the trick when inventorying. I just need to wait till the weekend when we do our next proper tape run and see how it goes.

[howartp]

Interesting to see if patch 2 helps me then; my jobs just claim to have no response from the tape drive after about 1.5-2days (these are big jobs) then give up when the 4-hour non-response timeout elapses.

[penfold]

@howartp - I was pointed to this article KB1887: Tape Jobs fail with I/O errors or (SCSI) Bus resets when I had similar issues but it didn't resolve the problem.