Couple of very basic questions

[pparks1]

I'm going to be getting a copy of Veeam B&R 5.0.2 Enterprise Edition. It will be used to backup a forthcoming single ESXi host with local disk space in my local office. There will only be a handful of virtual machines created on the ESXi box...and we will likely virtualize a couple of aging physical servers.

Because of a lack of hardware, I'll most likely be installing Veeam on a workstation class box, with a few large disk drives and backing up via the network with a 1Gbps ethernet link.

At present, we don't have a license for SQL Server at this office, and I'd rather not install and configure one. So, I have been considering using the provided SQL Server 2005 Express option that Veeam comes with. However, I have a question that I have yet to find either in the documentation or on this site.

1). Isn't SQL Server 2005 Express limited to a 4GB database maximum? And if so, how quickly am I going to reach this maximum backing up 5 VM's each consuming say 40GB of disk space?

2). How should I go about doing a backup of this B&R database in the event that a disaster happens to my Veeam B&R box?
--I found this thread: http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... =15#p32932.
-- it suggests just running a command like this; SQLCMD -S GR-VEEAM\VEEAM -E -Q "BACKUP DATABASE VeeamBackup TO DISK='G:\backup\VeeamBackupdb_%All%.bak' WITH FORMAT"

-- I assume then, if disaster struck, I would reload the Veeam software on my box, then restore the above VeeamBackupdb.bak file and all of my configurations and backups would be available once again.


Thanks in advance.

[Alexey D.]

Hello Patrick,

1) 4GB is more than enough for any virtual environment. Veeam B&R doesn't store backup data inside its database, only configuration and session info. So this limitation is unlikely to ever be reached.

2) You found a good thread, the script mentioned should work for you. Generally speaking, it is ok to use any native tools to backup and then restore the database, you can use Management Studio instead of script, for example.

P.S. If you install B&R to a workstation box, please be aware that 4 cores CPU is recommended for better performance. However, less cores can also be ok, just don't forget to estimate CPU workload using Task Manager.

[Gostev]

By the way, SQL Server 2008 R2 Express edition bumps the limit to 10GB, so this may be another options for those who is worried that 4GB may not be enough. Could be the case for very large environments and doing backups/replicas more than once per day (which would produce multiple sessions). Although this kind of big environments always have a licensed SQL to put Veeam Backup database on anyway...