Tape Library: How to make ABR to take another tape for daily backups

Hello Sait,

Thank you for your question! For your scenario I would suggest using the option Always use a free tape.

Thank you,

Hello Ekaterina,

But then I will have 8 tapes for a day since I have 8 Backup Plans which collecting different type of data from multiple machines.

My goal is:
Backup 1 + .... + Backup 8 --> Tape Monday
Backup 1 + .... + Backup 8 --> Tape Tuesday
..... and so on
Backup 1 + .... + Backup 8 --> Tape Saturday (weekly Backup)
...
Backup 1 + .... + Backup 8 --> Tape Saturday (monthly backup)

Regards

What I tried:
Changed Tape Options for the first Backup Task to “Always use a free backup” and hoped it takes a new tape every day and other tasks use also this tape. Acronis really took a new Tape(Tape 4, 5 and 6) for this task but all other tasks still used another tape(tape 1) again. I cannot see any options how to say Acronis which tape it should take.

Any ideas how to manage this?

Hello Sait,

Thank you for additional information! I would suggest creating separate Tape Pool for every day, f.e pool Monday, pool Tuesday etc. Then create separat backup plans, pointing to corresponding pools. Thus backup task Monday will write only to tapes (or one tape) from associated pool Monday.

Thank you,

Hello Ekaterina

Thank you for providing proposals.

First, I can not find any option how to point a Backup Job to a specific Tape Pool. Can you please tell me how?

Second, as I described in my previous posts I have multiple backup jobs per per day. Again

My goal is:
Backup 1 + .... + Backup 8 --> Tape Monday
Backup 1 + .... + Backup 8 --> Tape Tuesday
..... and so on

I want Acronis to be able to change the Tape after a day.

Regards

Hello, you have to create 7 tapes pools, name it Monday, Tuesday, ..., Sunday. Then create 7 Tape-based vaults with the same names and assign corresponding tape pool to all vaults (see attached screen).
Then create 7 weekly backup plans - each backup plan should perform backup to corresponding Vault at the specific day of week. As result, each day will be taken media from separate pool (Monday, Tuesday etc...).

Hi Acronis Team,

It doenst solve my issue because I have daily multiple Backup Plans which collects data from different machines. When I create a Tape Based Vault, say for Monday, it is not possible to have all Backup Plans to assing this pool.

Anothe solution would be to make all Backp Plans to put data in a central Folder first. Then I can create another Backup Plan with Tape and save all data to the tape. But in this case the problem is Acronis compresses Data in a special format when backin up.

Is there a way for Acronis not to compress/convert Data in Acronis specific format but keep the original File view?

Best Regards

you can set an option - "Enable file recovery from disk backups stored on tapes" (available from Backup options -> Tape management).
In this case, you will be able to browse files of machines backups from Data catalog.
See details regarding this option here: http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisBackup_11.5/#…
Also you don't need to backup backups from disk storage, set "Replicate newly created backup to another location" option from How to Backup section in the Backup Plan (specify corresponding Tape Vault).

Hi Andrey,

I think you don't understand my goal. I try to explain it again:

We have a Backup Server with Acronis Backup and Recovery v11.5 installed. On 5 other servers Acronis Agent is installed. A Tape Library Dell PowerVault TL2000 with 24 Tapes is our Backup Destination. We did not created customized Tape Pools, we use default ones.

Totally 7 daily Backup Plans(for all Backup Schema:GFS, Retention Rules: Keep Daily backups 6 days, Weekly backups 4 weeks, Monthly backups 12 months) configured to get different type of data from these server and save on Tape.
There is also a weekly Backup Plan for ImageBackup of all 5 servers to Tape(Backup Schema:GFS)

Our idea was that Acronis saves these 7 daily Backups on a Tape, which it does. And next day another tape should be used.
Monday: Day 1 --> Tape 1 (daily)
Tuesday: Day 2 --> Tape 2 (daily)
...
Saturday: Day 6 --> Tape 6 (weekly)
.....
Saturday: Day X --> Tape X (monthly)

What we noticed: Acronis takes the first free Tape from the "Acronis" pool, say Tape1 and put Backup-Monday on Tape1. It continues to save all daily Backups on Tape1, until maybe Tape1 is full. For weekly and monthly backups however Acronis takes Tape2 and Tape3. Also ImageBackups are saved on a separate Tape, it was Tape3.

Since we see, there is no option in Acronis to say "Save daily backups on individual tapes", an alternative would be first create a centralized vault, a Folder on the Hard Disk. Re-direct all Backups in this folder, so we have everything from the day in one location. A new BackupPlan can save this folder on the tape, where we set the option "Use a new tape for each full backup". This way we could have daily tapes. But after first backup this Folder contains data in Acronis specific format which means after backup this up on the tape we can not browse inside the tape.

Hope this is more clear now.

Best Regards

Thanks for clarification, yes the scenario is clear now, but I still cannot understand why do you want daily backups on a different tapes, what's the reason?
You're correct, the product takes new media for different backup layers - separate tape set for increment, different and full backups. This approach allows to provide more effective tapes re-usage (since you store incremental backups for 6 days, only a few tapes are required for increment layer, these tapes become available for overwriting pretty soon).
Regarding format, you can browse content of any Acronis archive stored on disk. Simple double-click *.tib file on a machine with Agent for Windows installed (make sure that you have C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Acronis\TibMounter installed). Similar option in Windows Explorer - Mount option in right-click menu.
Unfortunately we don't have an option to specify exact tape to own day of week, we will consider to add such functionality to new version of the product, thanks for request.

Hello Andrey,

The reason why we want to have different tapes for daily backups is that in case something bad happens to the daily tape we should still have other tapes. Right now Acronis saves daiy backups on only one tape and this is very risky for us. Second reason we have our internal rules which we have to follow.

You apparently misunderstood my question regarding format. I was asking if it is possible for Acronis NOT to encrypt files when backup. If we can disable this function we can first collect and backup all data in an Hard Disk folder (Backup 1) and then this folder will be backed up on Tape (Backup 2). Since look at backup of backup inside Acronis for Restore purposes we dont know what is what.

Best Regards

Hi, thanks for clarifications.
Regarding format, seems like we use the same words for different things) It is possible to protect backup archive using encryption (it can be set in Backup options), but encryption is disabled by-default. Without encryption, everyone can mount .tib file and get access to its content.
We store backups in our proprietary tib format that allows us to use compression for protected data and reduce the amount of needed storage space.
This also provides backward compatibility between different product versions.
Probably this topic may help: https://forum.acronis.com/forum/31527

Hi Andrey,

I think I was using incorrect terminology.
I created a Test Vault "BackuptoDisk" and a run a test Backup Plan to save Data in this folder. After running this job I can have a look at the Content which looks like, see attachment "Backup Content 1". Now say I have everything from different machines in this folder and want to backup this on tape.

For this purpose I created a new BackupPlan and this has as Source "BackupToDisk" folder from previous step. Run a full backup. Look at the content, see see attachment "Backup Content 2", which is not useful for people who might have to restore fron this backup.

Do you see what I mean now?

Best Regards

Yes, its clear. As I said, we use tib format for backups. Initial backup on disk is also stored in tib file and you can see its content from Acronis Management Console because we keep caches of file system, this allows you to browse backed up content from the Console. Additionally (as I told above) you can mount the image (tib file) and browse content from Windows explorer.
In the second backup to tape you specified folder with *.tib files as a source. From product's side this is the just a folder with files and it shows the backup's content accordingly (as on screen2).
The only thing that you can do here is to re-configure first backup plan - set two destinations - backup to disk with replication to tape. In this case you will see your content as in screen1 even for recovery from tapes.

The idea to have BackupToDisk folder is to collect data from multiple Backup Plans in a central storage and from there perform a Backup to Tape. This way I wanted to achive my initial goal to have different tapes for daily backups.

If there is no way in Acronis to disable saving in TIB Format, this approach will not work.

We're working on an ability to have different tapes for daily backups, we got similar requests. It is expected in the next product's version.

Can you please confirm that there is no option to disable saving in TIB format?

Best Regards

Yes, I confirm it.

Thank you Andrey, for all your support.

Best Regards

Hi Andrey,

Do you know when the next Acronis revision with the ability to have different tapes for daily backups will be released?

Best Regards

I suppose within next half-year, it is difficult to say more accurately.

Hello.

I'm using Acronis v11.7 and I've a similar case:

multiple backups;

daily backups (incremental) must be done in different tapes;

weekly and monthly backups (full) must be done in different tapes;

BackupToDisk is out of question;
 

My questions are:

Which Acronis version is able to attend these necessities?
If yes, how can I configure Acronis to implement this GFS scheme using different tapes?

Thanks in advance.

Hello David,

In Acronis Backup 12.5 we've implemented the functionality of creating Tape sets with various preferences e.g you can configure custom rules for your tapes as described in Tape Management part of the documentation.