Before You Begin

Before you configure a backup to tape job, complete the following prerequisites:

  • You must have Veeam Backup & Replication Enterprise license or higher installed on the Veeam backup server.
  • [For Veeam Cloud Connect service providers] To back up tenants to tape, you must have Veeam Cloud Connect service provider license installed on the Veeam backup server.
  • You must check configuration of source backup job(s). Tape jobs have the following requirements for the restore points to keep setting:
    • A source job with forever forward incremental chain must keep not less than 3 restore points on disk.
    • A source job with forward incremental chain must keep not less than 3 restore points on disk.
    • A source backup copy job in the immediate copy mode must keep not less than 3 restore points on disk.
    • A source backup copy job in the periodic copy mode must keep not less than 4 restore points on disk.
    • A reverse incremental chain has no required minimum.
  • 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. If the media pool has no available tape, the tape job will wait for 72 hours and then terminate.

Mind the following limitations:

  • 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. Reverse incremental backups (VRB) are skipped from processing.
  • Microsoft SQL Server log files (VLB) are skipped from processing.
  • [For Veeam Cloud Connect service providers] The backup to tape job that backs up tenants to tape will not process backups created with previous versions of Veeam Backup & Replication or Veeam Agents. To avoid this, you must upgrade the tenants' backup server or agent machines to the last version. After the upgrade, the tenants' jobs must run at least once.
  • If a job is unable to complete within 21 days period, it will be stopped with the 'Failed' status.