Best pratices for database Vm

[comapny1980]

Dear All,
what is the best practices for backup of database machine vms like oracle, Microsoft sql. I have series of question about it.
1) if we backup above mention machine from veeam do we need to configure sql or oracle logs option or backing up the whole machine automatically do this?
2)if these option is necessary what is the best option for its?
3)if we have an oracle database machine with 7 restored point, if we restored it to the desired restored point, so what about our database it is consistent.

Regards

Furqan Ahmed

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Furqan,

The best practice would be to use application-aware image processing feature with these options (depending on our DR strategy) > check out SQL Server and Oracle related settings. If you have all this enabled, then using native (built-in) backup mechanism is not required.

Additionally, please review these guides for restore capabilities within Veeam > Veeam Backup Explorers User Guide

Thanks!

[stanleymok]

Hi all,

I have installed Veeam Backup & Replication v9, and have a VM which install MS window 2012 with SQL 2012 standard. Now I have some question about to create a backup job for this server, anybody can help?

1. I know there have some data checking in VM source file and Veeam backup file (but I don't know the detail), thereby any different between version 7 and version 9?

2. Any security concern when SQL database backup and restore?

3. Any new features in version 9 which improve SQL database backup?

4. Any best practices for SQL database backup and restore?

Thanks a lot,

Stanley

[foggy]

Hi Stanley, best practices are pretty straightforward and are mentioned in Vitaliy's post above. Since v7, SQL transaction logs backup ant point-in-time restore were added, so take a look at available options.

[stanleymok]

Hi Foggy,

Thanks for your reply, do you have any suggestion for my points 1 to 3?

Thanks a lot,

Stanley

[foggy]

In fact I'm not quite understand the first point and have already mentioned logs backup feature in response to p.3. You can also review the complete what's new document for v9 for some additional features in the area of SQL Server processing.

Regarding p.2, could you please elaborate on what security concerns do you have? Do you mean something similar to what is discussed in these threads?
Backup for a Confidentail VM - Security Concern
Security Doubts - Microsoft Exchange Explorer

[stanleymok]

Hi Foggy,

For P.1, could you mind to tell me more detail how Veeam to guarantee backup database is as same as source?

For P. 2, do you have more detail about Veeam use what method to connect SQL database once backup job start?

Thanks a lot,

Stanley

[tdewin]

We make everything consistent by talking to VSS directly. This should make sure that everything in memory is flushed to disk and thus we make a consistent state:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... ssing.html

For sql you can do log backup to have a better RPO. If you want to know how it works, you can read more details here :
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... p_hiw.html
In this case, a component will be left behind on the VM that will process the logs and send them over on a regular interval. Since we can do flr recovery from a VM backup, we can extract the full database from the VM backup. Thus the VM backup counts as a full backup, and you can use the log backups to do point-in-time recovery. Most important is that you don't have to install or update this component in the VM, it is deployed and kept up to date automatically by the job

Setting it up is quite simple, like state above you don't need to deploy an agent, you just need to enable application aware image processing:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... ss_vm.html
And SQL specifics:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... ql_vm.html

In the end there is no 100% guarantee that what you backup with any product is 100% recoverable (for example application bugs in the VM, corruption on disk by a faulty hardware controller, ...). However you can use Surebackup to validate if your backups are recoverable. This will power on the VM in a bubble network environment and test if the application started. You can enhance surebackup with your own scripts/test
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... ation.html