ABR10 poor Tape Support

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I would like to start with saying that ABR10 is a great product, meets all (99%) of my requirements. Backup and restore files, with the addition of simple/straight forward bare-metal restore. I was pretty happy with the product during evaluation.

One thing I missed before I purchased was when you have a tape vault it will backup your files, but come restore time it's a bit of a guess/manual work. Your vault will tell you the backup job name and how much data has been backed up, but when you need to check the content of that backup you need to know which tape you used for that backup job. You will receive an error message in ABR10 because it thinks the .meta folder is missing/corrupt because the tape in not in the drive, it also does not tell you which tape you need to mount. Which is complete CRAP! This is the whole reason tape is used so you can store them offsite. It seems like instead of automating things they would like you to do things manually.

Now all backup solutions out there have some sort of local database to keep track of all this and ABR10 is also suppose to do this, but I guess it does not keep all the information you need on the local server db. Nor did I think that I needed to ask if this feature was there as I currently have a 6 year old backup software that can keep track of my backups and does not require for tapes to be mounted for it to tell me what I've backed up and what I can restore and which tape I would need to recall if they are offsite.

I am currently working with Acronis on this and hopefully they can add this *BASIC* feature in the near future.

Regards,
Timonthy

Sab, 01/09/2010 - 04:06
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Hello Timothy!

Thank you for finding time to open the thread regarding this question, I completely understand it and will be glad to provide you with solution.

I'm glad to let you know that we have the required functionality: 

you have an ability to check the content of the backup, know which tape you used for particular backup job, what tape to mount, etc.. For it you need to install Storage Node (which is a component of the installation file) onto the machine with the tape and create centralized vault for this tape.

This will provide you with the Tape Management feature, with the help of which you can assign particular label to each separate tape (feel free to mark it with that label after taking it offsite). This ensures you that you won't mess with the tape.

Than, we have a separate database with the information about the tapes, including the backups stored on each of them, so even taking the tape offsite you are still able to browse the content of it. Unfortunately due to the limitations of the product you cannot browse file content of the disk backup, but there is no issue with reviewing it from the data backup.

Recovery process will show the labels of the tapes involved in the recovery process and ask for the next tape is needed. I would advise you to take a look at the chapter 4.1.3 Of the User's Guide - it contains all the information regarding these features, so you may find it useful.

I would appreciate if you could kindly give us some additional details of the issue you faced with the recovery from the tape - we will be glad to assist you.

Should something seem confusing or you have any further questions - feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience, we will be happy to help you!

Thank you!

Mer, 02/17/2010 - 13:05