SQL Monitoring Tool

[Vinn]

I've recently started Veeam to backup my company's virtualized Microsoft SQL servers. The hypervisor is VMware. My SQL DBAs use a monitoring tool called Idera for their SQL databases which does performance reporting and alerting for them. For two of the three SQL servers, the DBAs are getting fatal alerts from the monitoring tool reporting that the database is down during the backup. The 3rd SQL server does not have these problems. They see the following message on the SQL server during the backup:

I/O is frozen on database. No user action is required. However, if I/O is not resumed promptly, you could cancel the backup.

This is undoubtedly caused by the VSS snapshot process freezing the database in preparation for backup. It may be worth noting that the two SQL servers that have this problem are running 2008 and 2012, but the SQL server that does not have this problem is 2014.

Is there an adjustment I can make in Veeam or on the SQL server to resolve this issue? Is there a Microsoft patch that improves the VSS snapshot process? Is anyone in the community familiar with Idera? Are there monitoring thresholds in Idera that can be modified to suppress these alerts?

[PTide]

Hi,

I guess that first you should compare the monitoring settings and thresholds that are configured for all three SQL servers. Here are the links:

1. Idera General Server options
2. Database alerts and statuses
3. Baseline thresholds

If no differences will be discovered then the problem might be on a OS-SQL Server level and you will need to contact Microsoft regarding that.

Btw, are all three server in the same one job?

Thanks

[Vinn]

Yes. All three SQL servers are in the same job. They have 3-5 database instances apiece.

I've asked my SQL DBAs to reconfigure their custom alert to allow for more time for the VSS snapshot to complete, but they are reluctant to do so. It looks like they would need to increase the threshold to 45 seconds or a minute, and they don't want to do that. I've worked with Veeam support, and they've said that the message in SQL is expected normal behavior. They've also said that if the database was truly inaccessible, that the Veeam backup would fail. This leads to the conclusion that the alert from Idera is a false alarm.