Part 2 – Veeam and AWS Tape Gateway Integration – Creating Tapes

The diagram shown below, taken from Veeam’s AWS/VTL Deployment Guide, is a representation of the infrastructure we are creating in this series:

In part 1 of the Veeam and AWS Tape Gateway integration series, we looked at the process of deploying the AWS Tape Gateway OVF (Gateway VM) on VMware vSphere.  In this post, we’ll look at the steps required to create the virtual tapes.

Before creating the tapes, browse to the AWS Storage Gateway limits page to review the most current tape limits.  The diagram below displays the tape limits as they existed on 11-10-2017:

1. On the AWS services page, click Storage Gateway under the Storage heading.
2. On the Storage Gateway dashboard, click Gateways and then Create tapes.

3. On the Create tapes window, specify the following and click Create tapes:

• choose the tape Gateway to which the tapes will be assigned
• specify the Number of tapes to create
• specify the tape Capacity (size) – you are charged for the amount of data written to the tape, not its total capacity.
  • To date, I haven’t found best practice recommendations regarding tape capacity but my general rule of thumb, as an example, is if you’re using 600GB tapes today, set the Capacity to 600GB.  However, this is just a general rule because if you tell me a full backup requires 800GB, then I may create 1TB tapes and so on.  I’ve never been a full-time backup admin so you can take my advice with a grain of salt, I promise I won’t be offended.  If you are a backup admin with extensive tape experience and have ideas and best practices you’d like to share, please feel free to do so by leaving a Comment on the post or contacting us through the Contact page.  I would love to hear your thoughts.
• Finally, specify an optional Barcode prefix if you so choose. The barcode prefix must be 1-4 uppercase letters from A-Z and because I love AWS so much, I made it my barcode prefix.

4. In the navigation pane, choose the Tapes tab to see your tapes. During the tape creation process, the status of the virtual tapes will display as CREATING.  After the tapes are created, their status changes to AVAILABLE.

This is kinda a short one but it’s Friday so have a good weekend!

With tapes created, we’ll look at how to attach the Virtual Tape Library to a Windows host (which will be our Veeam backup server) on the next post.