Proxmox 5.0 Adding Tape Drive For Windows Backups

[proxmoxnewbie50]

Hello, first time here but looking for some help.

I have the latest proxmox and I'm trying to add a RD1000 tape drive to it so that windows server 2016 can see it as a tape drive, not just a disk. I can get windows server 2016 to see it as a disk but that creates problems, it doesn't allow the tape to be ejected, etc.(because it's mounted/seen as a hard drive not a backup tape)

I have read through the documentation for doing this but some of it is outdated or just doesn't work. I believe that the tape drive needs to be setup as a passthrough but I have been unsuccessful in getting this completed. I would greatly appreciate any help or guidance.

Thank you for your time!

 

[WhiteStarEOF]

I believe that's a USB tape drive, yes? It used to be that you needed to manually alter the VM configuration files to pass through USB devices. However, these days there is a USB Device option when adding hardware to a VM. Have you seen documentation on using this feature in the web interface, and is that what's failing you?

I've had trouble with devices plugged into USB 3 ports, but there is a USB 3 checkbox in the interface, so I imagine that fixes whatever problems I had run into in the past. It's been a while since I've had to do it myself, but I remember the web interface being very reliable. Select your VM, select Hardware, Add, USB Device, Use USB Vendor/Device ID, select your USB device, click USB 3 if it's plugged into a USB 3 port, and Add.

If this is where you've run into trouble, you may need to unload the kernel module, and black list it in Proxmox. In the past it could be troublesome to pass hardware through, because the host OS already latched on to it. I haven't run into that problem in a while, but certainly worth knowing about.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn't take at least some time to scoff at tape backup.

 

[proxmoxnewbie50]

Hmmm Thanks for the heads up. It's actually connected via Sata and that's were I'm running into a problem. I'm trying to passthrough a sata device to the VM but it's just not working. I can get windows to see the drive but it treats the tape as a hard disk and won't eject tapes, ect. I just want windows to see the actual drive itself and then the tape should work I believe.

And yes this customer is still using Tape Drives as backups, I respect the scoff I have found a couple of guides on how to pass through a Sata device to a VM but the guides don't work because the newest Proxmox 5 is using Debian 9 instead of 8(deb8 has plenty of working guides apparently). Ultimately I think I'm going to just order a Sata to USB adapter and see if that works. I appreciate the response and thank you for your time!