SQL AlwaysON - Veeam only creating copy_only backups with active/active nodes

[mrholm]

Hi
We have seen a situation that I think is a large limitation and I should say here that I'm not an SQL DBA but I have a competent team of DBAs.
The thing is that the Veeam Windows Agent seem to work in same manner as Veeam is doing with VMware snapshots in SQL AG. For VMware snapshot there's a clear statement:

During image-level backup of a Microsoft SQL Server VM, Veeam Backup & Replication requests and analyzes information about databases that are included in the AlwaysOn Availability Groups. Depending on the retrieved information, Veeam Backup & Replication creates a VSS snapshot with or without COPY_ONLY flag. The VSS_BS_COPY flag for VSS snapshot is triggered if the VM represents a secondary node for at least one AlwaysOn Availability Group

When using agents you think there's an opportunity to use more intelligent behavior. But when we move an individual AG (we have 6 AG in this cluster) to the other node and both nodes have at least one AG as secondary, this makes Veeam starts doing copy_only backup on all AG. This is not a major issue since Veeam continue handling backups of transaction logs but new databases added will only have a copy_only backup and therefore Veeam is unable to backup the transaction log for the new DB since there’s no Full backup ending up with:

At least one full database backup must be performed before transaction log backup can be enabled
Transaction logs from some databases were not backed up for the last 15 intervals

So in a scenario where all AG is on one node the backup works fine with Veeam but when having an active/active scenario seems to break this. How are other handling this?
We will also create a support case for this to work together with support on it
//Mats

[mrholm]

Support case: 04423712

[mrholm]

Any information on this from Veeam or ny other user?

How is Veeam palnning to handle a scenarion of SQL AG in an active/active scenario where half of the AG is placed on one node and the other half is placed on the other node? This mean that Veeam will always do copy_only of all AG/databases?

In the support case we got this answer but I feel this is not OK in an Enterprise Product:

About the issue with backup of multiple Availability Groups, which distribute Active and Passive copies among nodes (having any specific node hosting both Active and Passive copies), I'm afraid that there is currently no workaround for it - when Veeam Agent detects passive copy of AG on a node, "copy_only" backup will be performed for it.

Therefore, SQL transaction logs truncation would be failing to process such databases as well - due to lack of Full backups for those databases.

Any ideas on this?

//Mats

[Dima P.]

Hello Mats,

Sorry for keeping silence. Checking your case details with QA folks, stay tuned for the update from support team.

[vmun]

We are now facing the same problem. Has nothing changed in a year?
Mats, was there any continuation on the support case? How do you end up backing up SQL AG?
Dima, what did the QA folks say?