Connecting Tape Devices

To deploy a tape device, you must perform the following steps:

1. Choose a machine that will act as the tape server. You can choose between the following options:

• Use the Veeam backup server as the tape server. This variant is sufficient for small environments with low traffic workloads.
• Deploy a dedicated tape server. As a tape server, you can use any Microsoft Windows server, physical or virtual, accessible by Veeam Backup Free Edition. A dedicated tape server is recommended for installations with intense data transferring. A dedicated tape server allows you to manage remote tape libraries.

2. Connect the tape device to the machine that will perform the role of the tape server. You can connect the tape device in two ways:

• Directly over Fibre Channel (FC), Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), SCSI
• Remotely with iSCSI (you can use Microsoft iSCSI initiator to establish the connection).

3. Install an appropriate device driver on the tape server.
4. If the medium changer driver is not available, check that the tape device uses native SCSI commands.

Open the Tape Infrastructure view, expand the Libraries node and select the needed library. Click Properties on the ribbon. You can also right-click the necessary library in the working area and select Properties. Select the Use native SCSI commands instead of Windows driver check box.

5. Add the tape server to Veeam Backup Free Edition. See Adding Tape Servers for details. Veeam Backup Free Edition will automatically scan connected tape devices and display all discovered tape libraries and tape drives under the Libraries node in the Tape Infrastructure view. Afterward, the auto-discovery process will be performed periodically every 3 minutes.

You can connect a number of tape devices to each tape server. The connected tape devices will appear as list under the Libraries node in the Tape Infrastructure view.

Veeam Backup Free Edition allows deploying a number of tape servers. However, if you have a number of Veeam backup servers, you cannot connect one tape server to several Veeam backup servers simultaneously.

Reconnecting Tape Devices to Another Tape Server

You can reconnect your tape devices to another tape server. For example, you can reconnect the tape devices from the Veeam backup server to a dedicated tape server. To do this, choose a tape server and perform steps for connecting tape devices above. When you add the new tape server to Veeam Backup Free Edition, Veeam Backup Free Edition will recognize the tape devices and all tape device settings.