SureBackup, Always On Availiability Groups, and Agent-based Backups

[another_fine_maze]

Hi all,

This is less a technical issue (as of yet) and more of a "am I missing something in the documentation?". I'll kick this over to support if it doesn't work, but I'd like to be able to say with at least some confidence whether it's even a good idea to try in the first place.

Let's take a customer who has a 3 node SQL Always-On Availability Group. I doubt it matters, but it's SQL 2019, Windows 2019 as well.

The servers in question are VMs, but they are currently being backed up as an Agent job, with a Protection Group associated with it. They're not keen on changing this to a VM image based model anytime soon. (This may have to change, but I'd need something compelling to move in this direction)

The customer asked "How can we bring this AOAG up and test it in SureBackup, using the full recoverability testing, to know if our backups are good?", and that's where I admit I started going down quite the rabbit hole. This is not the normal use case for SureBackup, as far as I can tell or have ever set up. If this was a production recovery of an AOAG, that's fairly straightforward. Adding SureBackup introduces complexity.

I can prove that AOAG's are supported from Agent-based jobs: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

I can prove that Agent-based backups can act as a source for a SureBackup Job as of V12, with caveats: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agent ... tml?ver=60 --I've tried this out, and the P2V works better than I expected.

I know I can set up an Application Group and SureBackup Job to stay running after the job completes, which seems to make sense here. I want all 3 nodes up.

But I can't prove that doing a SureBackup job that handles an AOAG from an agent-based source is a possibility.

I have a feeling the answer is either "Nope" or "This is more a Recovery Orchestrator thing", but I try to stay away from Vibes-Based answers. Has anyone tried this or similar?

The followup question might end up being: "If not SureBackup, how best to test these backups?"

[PetrM]

Hello,

Basically, SureBackup is the same as restoring all the availability group nodes. The only difference is that this restore goes to an isolated environment. I don't see any reason SureBackup for AOAG wouldn't work. Do you have any specific cases in mind that, from your point of view, might not work smoothly?

Thanks!