Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?
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@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Donahue said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
my plan had been to use real tape, as we wanted to physically move it off site. But things may change
How much data are we talking? How are you currently getting tapes offsite?
If he uses LTO-8 tapes it's 12TB native/ 30TB compressed per tape.
PS. Transfer rate btw is 900 MByte/sec, 700 MB/sec was LTO-7 tape.
You need 10Gbit sized internet pipes for cloud backup to even compete with that. -
@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Donahue said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
my plan had been to use real tape, as we wanted to physically move it off site. But things may change
How much data are we talking? How are you currently getting tapes offsite?
If he uses LTO-8 tapes it's 12TB native/ 30TB compressed per tape.
Yeah, that is quite a bit. Is he only using 1 tape a week, or 20?
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I'm not currently using tapes yet. I bought some LTO-7 tapes, but they've been on my shelf for like a year because other projects came up. I had been planning like 1 a week or some similar interval.
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@Donahue said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
I'm not currently using tapes yet. I bought some LTO-7 tapes, but they've been on my shelf for like a year because other projects came up. I had been planning like 1 a week or some similar interval.
LTO-7 is 6TB native / 15TB compressed so still a lot.
Do you have a lot of VMs running on it? You might want to consider going bare metal. Solves your problem without any hassle.
Or as mentioned, just get a second controller for the tape and pass that through the hypervisor. You only need a simple HBA SAS-2 (6Gbps) for a tape drive.
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@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
LTO-7 is 6TB native / 15TB compressed so still a lot.
Right, but he still hasn't said how much data he actually has. What is a standard full backup and what is his change rate. How often will full backups be run, etc.
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@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
LTO-7 is 6TB native / 15TB compressed so still a lot.
Right, but he still hasn't said how much data he actually has. What is a standard full backup and what is his change rate. How often will full backups be run, etc.
Yes, but what he does today would probably change if he the tape up and running. Otherwise why invest in tape? A single tape drive is something like $3K-$4K and simple 1U/2U tape library in the $7K-$8K range.
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@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
LTO-7 is 6TB native / 15TB compressed so still a lot.
Right, but he still hasn't said how much data he actually has. What is a standard full backup and what is his change rate. How often will full backups be run, etc.
Yes, but what he does today would probably change if he the tape up and running. Otherwise why invest in tape? A single tape drive is something like $3K-$4K and simple 2U tape library in the $7K-$8K range.
Definitely a considerable expense. However, if he is only filling up 5% of the tapes every week, what's the point in using tape?
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What is the plan for off-site storage with tapes? A service like Iron Mountain or someone takes them home and puts them in a closet?
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@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
LTO-7 is 6TB native / 15TB compressed so still a lot.
Right, but he still hasn't said how much data he actually has. What is a standard full backup and what is his change rate. How often will full backups be run, etc.
Yes, but what he does today would probably change if he the tape up and running. Otherwise why invest in tape? A single tape drive is something like $3K-$4K and simple 2U tape library in the $7K-$8K range.
Definitely a considerable expense. However, if he is only filling up 5% of the tapes every week, what's the point in using tape?
Could be to take it off site and store it. Tape has many times fewer bit errors than hard drives and 30 year archival properties. So they are excellent for that.
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@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
LTO-7 is 6TB native / 15TB compressed so still a lot.
Right, but he still hasn't said how much data he actually has. What is a standard full backup and what is his change rate. How often will full backups be run, etc.
Yes, but what he does today would probably change if he the tape up and running. Otherwise why invest in tape? A single tape drive is something like $3K-$4K and simple 2U tape library in the $7K-$8K range.
Definitely a considerable expense. However, if he is only filling up 5% of the tapes every week, what's the point in using tape?
Could be to take it off site and store it. Tape has many times fewer bit errors than hard drives and 30 year archival properties. So they are excellent for that.
I haven't used tapes in years. How does that change when they are used over and over or stored in less than ideal conditions?
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@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
someone takes them home and puts them in a closet?
Well, you can't beat the RTO of that solution with anything cloud related.
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@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
Could be to take it off site and store it.
Yeah, the portability for off site transfer is one of the biggest benefits to tape. But, if you don't have that much data, you can still get it offsite via a VTL and your WAN link.
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@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
someone takes them home and puts them in a closet?
Well, you can't beat the RTO of that solution with anything cloud related.
lol - maybe, maybe not.
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@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
LTO-7 is 6TB native / 15TB compressed so still a lot.
Right, but he still hasn't said how much data he actually has. What is a standard full backup and what is his change rate. How often will full backups be run, etc.
Yes, but what he does today would probably change if he the tape up and running. Otherwise why invest in tape? A single tape drive is something like $3K-$4K and simple 2U tape library in the $7K-$8K range.
Definitely a considerable expense. However, if he is only filling up 5% of the tapes every week, what's the point in using tape?
Could be to take it off site and store it. Tape has many times fewer bit errors than hard drives and 30 year archival properties. So they are excellent for that.
I haven't used tapes in years. How does that change when they are used over and over or stored in less than ideal conditions?
They are rated for 260 full backups per tape so eventually they will have to be replaced. If you only use two tapes that you swap out every week, it will take ten years before you have to replace them.
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@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
someone takes them home and puts them in a closet?
Well, you can't beat the RTO of that solution with anything cloud related.
lol - maybe, maybe not.
I guess it depends on if the guy who has them in his closet is on vacation or not.
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@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@wrx7m said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
someone takes them home and puts them in a closet?
Well, you can't beat the RTO of that solution with anything cloud related.
lol - maybe, maybe not.
I guess it depends on if the guy who has them in his closet is on vacation or not.
Or goes rogue lol
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Hey @Donahue. Have you looked at free Starwind Tape Redirector by any chance? It basically allows you to present a tape drive attached to the host as an ISCSI LUN to your Veeam B&R's Windows Server VM so the backup software would see it directly installed. Wouldn't this solve your problem?
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@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Donahue said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
I'm not currently using tapes yet. I bought some LTO-7 tapes, but they've been on my shelf for like a year because other projects came up. I had been planning like 1 a week or some similar interval.
LTO-7 is 6TB native / 15TB compressed so still a lot.
Do you have a lot of VMs running on it? You might want to consider going bare metal. Solves your problem without any hassle.
Or as mentioned, just get a second controller for the tape and pass that through the hypervisor. You only need a simple HBA SAS-2 (6Gbps) for a tape drive.
Keep in mind the data going to the tape is likely already compressed, so expect to the native amount of "backup data".
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@taurex said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
Hey @Donahue. Have you looked at free Starwind Tape Redirector by any chance? It basically allows you to present a tape drive attached to the host as an ISCSI LUN to your Veeam B&R's Windows Server VM so the backup software would see it directly installed. Wouldn't this solve your problem?
I used this also, but in the end it was slower and unreliable.
So I installed Veeam on hardware and all was well. You don't need veem server installed on the device you have tape drive connected to, so keep that in mind too.
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@Obsolesce said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Pete-S said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
@Donahue said in Hyper V Tape passthrough possible?:
I'm not currently using tapes yet. I bought some LTO-7 tapes, but they've been on my shelf for like a year because other projects came up. I had been planning like 1 a week or some similar interval.
LTO-7 is 6TB native / 15TB compressed so still a lot.
Do you have a lot of VMs running on it? You might want to consider going bare metal. Solves your problem without any hassle.
Or as mentioned, just get a second controller for the tape and pass that through the hypervisor. You only need a simple HBA SAS-2 (6Gbps) for a tape drive.
Keep in mind the data going to the tape is likely already compressed, so expect to the native amount of "backup data".
No, tape compression is way better.
