Link SQL-DB Backups to Application Backups in Veeam?

[DaStivi]

hello,

i'm interessted how other people handle this scenario...

the environment consits of virtual machines (vmware) and physical host
there is an central (physical) SQL Server Cluster
different VMs with Applications where the DB of the correspondig Application is residing on the SQL-Cluster

SQL-Cluster obviously has to be backed-up with Veeam Agent
and VMs are in a backup job with "traditonal" VM(-ware) VBR-Backup

The question now is, how can the Application Backup be consistent when the App Part runs on the VM, and when the DB is on ah different server within ah different Backup Job?

Worst-Case, its an veeam "unsupported" App, where an pre/post VM Script stops/starts the application (Service), i even would say the easiest way of having ah consistent Application Backup, but still the Database isn't snapshoted at the same time... even if the both jobs would be sheduled the "same" time its just not consitent!

you could run an sqlcmd to also create an SQL Backup-Dump now in the same script where the application stop/start is, but that would also result in ah non-Veeam DB Backup, what in my opinion also wouldn't make sense and would need manual intervention then, might also break ah Full-transaction-Log Backup that might run... therefore not veeam-aware, i would call it now, no real log, at least not from within the veeam backup console, etc...

i hope you can follow my questions/task and happy to read how other solve this situations

best regards
Stephan

[PetrM]

Hi Stephan,

I'm not sure that I clearly understand the issue with consistency. An application on VM uses the backend database running in the SQL cluster. If there is a consistent backup of the backend database produced by any job, an application won't have any problems because it will be connected to the database that is in an entirely consistent state. Speaking about backups of the VMs, AAIP is still needed to get a consistent backup of the VM itself, for example to leverage system VSS writers prior to snapshot creation.

Maybe you have a specific example and can describe what exactly is not working in your environment?

Thanks!

[DaStivi]

Hi, there are multiple different applications...

But as an example I'll take an software distribution software ....

Main application is on ah virtual machine, in this particular case the services gets stopped/started with pre freeze and post thaw scripts to have ah clean state of the application...

Now in ah full VM restore, or even instant vmm recovery the db would not match the application!

With the old Backup-Software there would have been an additional task in this pre freeze script where an remote sql backup would have been started in the sql cluster , that basically did dumped the DB of this particular app to the sql backup volume and would have been backed up again per File-Level afterwards...

But now with Veeam this would still work, but it's not managed then from Veeam and i would like to achieve that...

Even if it would be possible to just make ah backup of ah specific DB form an server within Veeam would work but that isn't how Veeam works I know, ...

Only thing I could imagine how this would be almost what it worked now, is when all the DBs are in full recovery mode, and with an restore of the particular application server , we would need to restore the database to the specific point-in-time , manually where the backup of this VM did created?!

[PetrM]

Many thanks for the reply, everything is clear in your request except the detail that is very important:

db would not match the application!

Could you please give more details about this mismatch? For example, what exactly is not working at the level of application?

Thanks!

[DaStivi]

As the database (server) backup does not have the same timestamp as the application (server) backup they do not match...

Take my software distribution Server example, if someone creates ah new app-package, the VM job would save the package data, but this package is also referenced in the database, but as said before when the backup snapshots do not match and you'll restore the VM alone you end up with ah database that's "newer" ... So you'll have to restore the database too... But how to find the correct moment in time where the application got the backup? And even then this would only work with full recovery model of the db...