Pre-Freeze and Post Thaw Script

[Supraman]

Hello Everyone,

May I asked how would I be able to check if my Pre-Freeze script and Post Thaw Script is working properly?

I have created a simple batch file to stop the SQl service and restart it; however, I can not tell if it is working or not. I have tried looking at the job logs and was not able to identify if it is even running.

Perhaps someone could provide me with a simple example stop a script.

[PetrM]

Hi Vinh,

The script will be considered to be executed successfully if it returns "0". Normally, you should see the green message "Running pre-freeze script in the guest OS" in job statistics view when you click on the specific VM. Just out of curiosity: why do you want to process SQL by running pre-freeze/post-thaw scripts instead of using application-aware processing which triggers SQL writer to bring application data to a consistent state?

You can find some examples on VeeamHub, probably it might help you to narrow down the issue with your script.

Thanks!

[Supraman]

Hello Petr,

The reason why is because these Vms, we are trying to backup are server 2003 which Application Awareness is not supported so we want to see if we can manually stop SQL to flush the data out of memory for consistent backup.

[veremin]

Yep, you surely can do that - this is exactly how many people create application-consistent backups of their VMs running outdated applications. Check the VeeamHub for script examples and these forums for more details regarding this approach. Thanks!

[Supraman]

Thanks for the Advice Veremin, I do have a quick question and that if we use the Vmware tool to quiesce we would have to add the script within the storage option for scripts correct? As in our case Server 2003 where it does not suppose application awareness we do not put the freeze and post thaw script within the guess processing menu correct?

[Mildur]

Scripts in the storage options will be run on the backup server at the start and end of the backup job.

If you want to have the script to be executed in the vm itself, you need to schedule them by yourself with windows task scheduler in the windows 2003 vm before the backup jobs starts.

Or you find a way to let the script start a remote session from the vbr server to the windows server 2003 to stop the services. I‘m not sure if that will work.

Best would be a scheduled task inside the vm before and after the backup job is running.

[PetrM]

Hello,

You may use VMware Tools Queiscence to create snapshot and enable application-aware processing as well, then select a specific VM in application-aware processing options and click Edit to open processing settings, select "disable application processing" on General tab, the menu for pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts remains available.

I guess it also makes sense to give a try to VMware Tools Quiescence without any additional scripts as VMware tools also interact with VSS framework, therefore SQL writer will be anyway involved in the process. But the usage of pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts inside the guest OS would be more reliable approach as Fabian has suggested.

Thanks!