SQL Item-Level Backup

[adispy]

Hi,
I must do something wrong or I did not understood the process right, but I am trying to do a SQL item-level restore and I have no restore points in time.

Using Veeam B&R with a Windows deployed agent. The backup that I did is not a full system backup, just the folder where the SQL databases are living. All databases are set to full recovery mode.
Can it be because I don't do a full system backup?

[ejenner]

Did you "Enable guest file system indexing" on the 'Guest Processing' tab for the job configuration?

[adispy]

No, I did not. But I found out the problem.
Another contractor is taking backups of the VMs and they are truncating the SQL logs, so I cannot anymore.

What will be the benefit in enabling the system index?

[Vitaliy S.]

What will be the benefit in enabling the system index?

The benefit is described right over here, please take a look.

[adispy]

Thank you

[ejenner]

Item level restoration and truncation are separate issues. Truncation is about the log files which have not been committed to the database. Whether you truncate with Veeam or if another 3rd party process is doing the truncation makes no difference to your ability to 'item level restore'. Truncation is about point in time recoveries. If you aren't doing a truncated logs backup then you're restricting yourself to restoring only from the most recent full database without the logs being committed. You'll have to replay the logs to bring the database up to date. That may not be too much of a problem if truncation is occurring regularly but totally depends on how critical your database is and how quickly it changes. For some organisations some of their databases are changing so rapidly and are so important that they require continuous backup with item level recovability.