MSSQL backup

[panzer]

Hi.
What are things to consider when designing backup of MSSQL-servers running on AHV? There is no transaction consistent approach like in Veeam for VMware og Hyper-V, so restoring an SQL-server will give me a corrupt database as far as I can see.

[ronnmartin61]

If Nutanix guest tools are installed on the VM they should trigger a VSS snapshot when we run our agentless AHV backup however we would encourage you to test. If you want full log grooming capabilities consider using the Veeam Windows agent.

[panzer]

NGT is running with VSS enabled on the SQL-servers. I have restored databases from different servers, and mounted them on a test server. DBCC CHECKDB runs OK on some of them, while others fail with error messages like "Table error: Object ID 0, index ID -1, partition ID 0, alloc unit ID 0 (type Unknown), page ID (1:342877) contains an incorrect page ID in its page header. The PageId in the page header = (0:0)". So now I don't know which one of my SQL restores will be corrupt. I was hoping not to have to manage backup agents for all my SQL-serveres.

[ronnmartin61]

Have you checked your setup against https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documen ... -wc-r.html? Perhaps VSS snapshots aren't being initiated by NGT for some reason.

[panzer]

I configured a Protection Group in Nutanix and enabled VSS on it, as instructed in https://portal.nutanix.com/page/documen ... -wc-r.html

It now looks like restore of a database from one server in the production group is OK. This will help me a lot. However, I am still considering using Veeam Agent on the SQL-servers to be able to configure log backup and log trunc. I really miss these functions from my Veeam/VMware system. Veeam for AHV is a bit disappointing.

[ronnmartin61]

We're continuing to work with the Nutanix data protection team to establish a facility that allows us to interact with their NGT VSS provider but right now there's no committed timeline