SQL Cluster Backup with 9.5 u3

[leo.white]

I have a Sister company that is starting to use Veeam. We currently do not use clustered SQL, so i am a bit out of my depth on answering his question when it comes to how to handle it. He currently runs the cluster physically, but I believe we have talked him into Virtualizing it. I had showed him the log backups that veeam does and how i can restore databases a while back before i realized he had a cluster. So i have been trying to figure out the proper way to help him get setup so Veeam can backup up his SQL cluster and he can get 15 in log backups. I found the article below and have some questions.

https://www.veeam.com/kb2463

Couple Questions:
1. - Does u3a now let the agent backup physical Clusters with log backups?
2.- If not, Does this work with Hyper-v the same way it would VMware?

[PTide]

Hi,

1. Yes, it does. As the article says:

Start the job. The cluster job will track node changes and perform log backup respectively.

2. Log backup works the same way with both VMware and Hyper-V, however you should keep in mind that VMware does not allow snapshots for shared disks, therefore such VMs won't be backed up.

Thanks

[ctg49]

I've got our SQL cluster with 5 instances backing up almost identically to how you're describing.. specifically, daily fulls, 6h incrementals, 15m logfiles for all DBs in all instances.

You'll be backing up with agent-based backups (treated as though it's a physical machine) and the disks won't be snapshotted in any way.

For the actual migration of the VMs, that might be a bit complicated since you'll be utilizing either pRDMs or VVOLs if your vCenter version (6.7) and SAN support it. I highly recommend using VVOLs for this use case, if available. Might be easier to build a fresh cluster and migrate the DBs themselves, I'll leave that as a mental exercise though.

[leo.white]

Awesome all, that is what i needed to know. I will pass the info along. If he virtualizes or stays physical sounds like he is covered.

"For the actual migration of the VMs, that might be a bit complicated since you'll be utilizing either pRDMs or VVOLs if your vCenter version (6.7) and SAN support it. I highly recommend using VVOLs for this use case, if available. Might be easier to build a fresh cluster and migrate the DBs themselves, I'll leave that as a mental exercise though."

For those of use who virtualize we do Hyper-V. Sadly some of the cool SAN feature integration only works with VMWare.