Hey Nikks,

WORM - when your WORM is full, therse no option to start from scratch with this tape, it’s full, not overwritable and ready for keeping the rest of it’s life in a safe :-)

Tape protection - defined within Veeam. It will not be able to append new data on it, it’s not possible to erase or remove data from it (only when your protection is removed)

Retention period - as with other Backup media, if it’s within retention, this media cannot be overwritten or deleted. Append ius possible (if defined in the job/pool). After the defined Retention, this tape can be “reused”.

So based on your request, normal tapes (not WORM) with normal reteion period should be your way to go.

Hope it’s getting more clear now.

Thanks for the information. I also need a clarity on append and overwrite. Suppose I have 1 TB tape , in this case,  append means full backup + incremental will proceed with same tape till it is full and overwrite means when tape is full , it will overwrite the same tape with append , correct?

Hey @Nikks, no problem. 
Regarding append/overwrite - do you use a GFS pool or a regular one? Do you want to add new backup data to these tapes, if there is enough space, even if it’s from another backup set?

If you have a Tape Library in use, i would recommend to use a GFS pool and setup. Then you would normaly go with Weekly, Monthly,…. FULL backups on tape - after that i wouldn’t append any data to these tapes (default) - but this can be changed. If daily is active, you have only increments (and here is Append per default selected).

Settings for append option:

• normal Media Pool: Step 4. Specify Media Set Options - User Guide for VMware vSphere (veeam.com)
• GFS Pool: Step 5. Specify Advanced Media Set Options - User Guide for VMware vSphere (veeam.com)

If you use to append data, keep in mind, after new data is “attached” to an already existing tape, the retention will also be extended.

We use regular one . Yes, we need to add new backup data to these tapes. In this scenario which protection do i need to use  of the 3 mentioned above?

then you would go with “Do not create, always continue using current media set.”

But maybe you can provide us some more details on your concept, perhaps theres a better option - Do you have a Tape Library and only use a regular Pool → take a look on the benefits on a GFS pool…

or do you only have a single Tape device?

Do not create, always continue using current media set is a good way to not waste your tapes for the dailys.

For weekly or monthly if you plan on exporting the tapes you want a new media set. There will be some wasted space if you do that, but your media set will be portable and contained together.

If you use the same media set, and have small VM’s, the retention period will be of the last VM backed up on that tape. If you had a 100GB VM backing up a 18TB LTO9 Tape, that is 180 times.  If you had a new media set each time, you are wasting a lot of tapes. if you continue, it will write to the same tape for a long time if you were doing monthly and yearly jobs on it. 

GFS is a great way to manage it.  I export my tapes from the library on a schedule as opposed to using WORM. WORM is a great way to prevent tapes from being overwritten but it stands for Write Once, Read Many.