USB External Tape Drives - BE 2010 R3 / 2012

[Mo_Chowdhury]

Hi,

At the moment I'm running BE 2010 R3 on a Server 2008 x64 server (physical) with an external USB tape drive (HP StorageWorks). This setup currently works no problem.

Going forward, I intend to roll out virtual machines on our base level server (HP DL180 G6) via Hyper-V Manager. I've read articles online that Symantec doesn't support USB tape drives on a VM?

What tape drives works and supported either on BE 2010 R3 or 2012 on a VM?

Thanks.

Mo

[Mo_Chowdhury]

Are USB tape drives a complete no with BE running on a VM?

Thanks.

Mo

[VJware · Accepted solution]

Have a look @ this KB - http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH130609

If it recall, its similar for USB / PCI passthrough as well.

If the media server has to be installed on a VM, its better (and imho reliable) to backup to disk storage instead of tape media.

[Mo_Chowdhury]

Thanks for your reply - we have 2 methods for backup. one to disk daily and another to tape daily as well.

This allows you to have an offsite backup for disaster recovery and also if for whatever reason one backup failed, then we should have one of the other jobs that backed up.

I intend to keep this strategy but I know with having the media server on a VM, the USB tape drives becomes a bit of a problem.

Thanks.

Mo

[CraigV]

...it is considered an alternative configuration and Symantec don't have to assist with this.

Why not attach the tape drive to the host, and load BE on it?

Thanks!

[Mo_Chowdhury]

Do you think it might work even though Symantec don't officially support it?

Alternatively, I would install this on the host and load BE on it but ideally I want to load it on the VM with it accessing the storage for disk backup and tape backup (if it USB passes through and works).

Thanks.

Mo

[CraigV]

...we did this (I didn't advise it!) using VMware vSphere 4.1 and SCSI tape drives. Worked well, until an issue. This necessitated full host restarts in order to redetect the MSL2024 G3s we had...so consider this carefully as the impact it has on your environment might be a lot greater than you think.

Thanks!