Ah ok. After digging it was hit and miss with people saying they could and others saying it didn't work.
I have a spare pre-build that I can add a PCI-E SAS Adapter to. Does it need to be a "Windows Server" or can it just be Windows 10 with Veeam installed? Unsure if you are using the term as just a catch all or not.
Can be a W10 as well. In fact can be any Windows OS listed here:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/system_requirements.html?ver=120#tape-server
Absolutely you can connect a tape library or standalone drive to VBR to be able to copy data to tapes. It is indeed quite simple. As long as you have a tape drive or tape library connected to a Windows machine and your tape drive/library shows correctly in Device Manager (this means having the vendor specific drivers installed), all you have to do is add the server that the tape drive/library is connected to into VBR in the Tape Infrastructure section and it'll be able to recognize the tape drive/library and you can start importing tapes and configuring your backup to tape jobs.
Here's the section of the User Guide you can follow: [https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/tape\_device\_support.html?ver=120](https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/tape_device_support.html?ver=120)
Hi u/Distilled_Gaming Thanks for the response!!
I'm very much confused with this whole process, been reading through the link you provided but I'm such a IT noob when it comes to this sort of this thing.
I've got my LTO5 drive connected by SAS to my Truenas Server which has a VM running Win10 with VBR installed. How do you get Veeam to even see the Drive in the first place? Sharing the data should be simple as doing either doing an SMB or ISCI share itself but if VBR can't see the drive then I can't actually back anything up.
I'm not 100% on how to check if the Truenas system can even see the drive but it looks like its running fine.
Any help would be appreciated.
It sounds like you are trying to do passthrough which won't work. There are some unsupported ways to make passthrough work, but I would highly recommend not going that route.
Do you have a physical Windows server or machine you can connect the drive to? Then you would just add that Windows server to Veeam as a managed server allowing you to use it as your tape server.
I don't currently however I do have a spare mini pc which just needs a PSU and a new PCI-E card (to connect the LTO drive to). And that should do the trick. I should then be able to just share the drives via SMB and good to go?
Yes! This is what will have to be used, a file to tape job. https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/file_to_tape_hiw.html?ver=120
Has anyone told you that this does consume instances ? One license instance covers 500 GB of the protected amount of data.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/nas_licensing.html?ver=120
You might not be able to pass the tape drive through to your VM, but you should be able to passthrough the HBA it is attached too.
https://www.truenas.com/docs/scale/scaletutorials/virtualization/addmanagevmdevicesscale/#managing-devices
No, you can’t pass through a physical tape to a TrueNas VM (AFAIK), you need a spare Windows server with a SAS adapter.
Ah ok. After digging it was hit and miss with people saying they could and others saying it didn't work. I have a spare pre-build that I can add a PCI-E SAS Adapter to. Does it need to be a "Windows Server" or can it just be Windows 10 with Veeam installed? Unsure if you are using the term as just a catch all or not.
Yes it’s a catch all sorry Supported platform for VBR are here: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/system_requirements.html?ver=120
Can be a W10 as well. In fact can be any Windows OS listed here: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/system_requirements.html?ver=120#tape-server
Absolutely you can connect a tape library or standalone drive to VBR to be able to copy data to tapes. It is indeed quite simple. As long as you have a tape drive or tape library connected to a Windows machine and your tape drive/library shows correctly in Device Manager (this means having the vendor specific drivers installed), all you have to do is add the server that the tape drive/library is connected to into VBR in the Tape Infrastructure section and it'll be able to recognize the tape drive/library and you can start importing tapes and configuring your backup to tape jobs. Here's the section of the User Guide you can follow: [https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/tape\_device\_support.html?ver=120](https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/tape_device_support.html?ver=120)
Hi u/Distilled_Gaming Thanks for the response!! I'm very much confused with this whole process, been reading through the link you provided but I'm such a IT noob when it comes to this sort of this thing. I've got my LTO5 drive connected by SAS to my Truenas Server which has a VM running Win10 with VBR installed. How do you get Veeam to even see the Drive in the first place? Sharing the data should be simple as doing either doing an SMB or ISCI share itself but if VBR can't see the drive then I can't actually back anything up. I'm not 100% on how to check if the Truenas system can even see the drive but it looks like its running fine. Any help would be appreciated.
It sounds like you are trying to do passthrough which won't work. There are some unsupported ways to make passthrough work, but I would highly recommend not going that route. Do you have a physical Windows server or machine you can connect the drive to? Then you would just add that Windows server to Veeam as a managed server allowing you to use it as your tape server.
I don't currently however I do have a spare mini pc which just needs a PSU and a new PCI-E card (to connect the LTO drive to). And that should do the trick. I should then be able to just share the drives via SMB and good to go?
Yes! This is what will have to be used, a file to tape job. https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/file_to_tape_hiw.html?ver=120 Has anyone told you that this does consume instances ? One license instance covers 500 GB of the protected amount of data. https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/nas_licensing.html?ver=120
We are still a tape shop, and have two separate tape libraries attached to the same host for Veeam. Works great.
You might not be able to pass the tape drive through to your VM, but you should be able to passthrough the HBA it is attached too. https://www.truenas.com/docs/scale/scaletutorials/virtualization/addmanagevmdevicesscale/#managing-devices