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As @eprieto did already post an excellent 3-part series of new v11 tape features. I want to highlight 3 small other features here.

Tape Consolidation 

As Esteban already explained, it is possible to copy tapes in v11. But Veeam put wood behind the arrow. You can use this feature to copy more old-generation-tapes to a few new-generation-tapes. In my example I used LTO2 as source and LTO6 as target.

Select tapes you want to consolidate.

You can also select tapes by media pool in wizard.

Select the target device and target media pool.

Choose your options and run the job.

After that - in my demo - I copied two LTO2 tapes to one LTO6 tape.
 

 

Full Tape Restore

 

With v11 you are able to restore the entire Tape to a Folder.

In wizard you choose the folder. Veeam knows how much space is needed and don't let you continue, when too less is left.

When tape includes file backup, there are a few more options then.
 

After the restore, all files are there like on the tape

 

New column in Tape view


The column shows when the tape was last written to

 

 

Thank you, @vNote42 ,

this are good news. I have to migrate from an old LTO Generation to a new one later this year. Now I can copy the content of the old tapes to a few new ones and don't have to wait for all old tapes to expire to get rid of them...

V11 rocks 😎

How does tape consolidation work from a technical perspective? Does the tape server need to cache the contents of the old tapes on disk or does it directly write on the new tapes?

How does tape consolidation work from a technical perspective? Does the tape server need to cache the contents of the old tapes on disk or does it directly write on the new tapes?

Good question! I cannot answer at the moment. According to Job-Log

I would say, Veeam copies one after the other and appends it to tapes on the target media pool.

Amazing Share @vNote42 , now i know i can move my data from lto6 to lto9 :sunglasses:

Thank you, @vNote42 ,

this are good news. I have to migrate from an old LTO Generation to a new one later this year. Now I can copy the content of the old tapes to a few new ones and don't have to wait for all old tapes to expire to get rid of them...

V11 rocks 😎

can't agree more with you. It does certainly takes care of a lot of hassles.

Veeam has been diligent about enhancement with tapes which I like. The tape will live longer, IMHO.

How does tape consolidation work from a technical perspective? Does the tape server need to cache the contents of the old tapes on disk or does it directly write on the new tapes?

Good question! I cannot answer at the moment. According to Job-Log

I would say, Veeam copies one after the other and appends it to tapes on the target media pool.


Thanks for the screenshot; it looks like Veeam is directly writing to the tapes. I'll do some tests as soon as the RTM is released.

Migrating tapes will sure get more important as LTO8/LTO9 offer only backward compatibility for one generation.

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