SQL Backup files

[TaylorB]

This is kind of a weird problem that I am not sure how to categorize. We have a SQL Admin that prefers to use SQL maintenance plans to spit out backup files, rather than letting Veeam do it. He puts all these on a central disk-based backup server and then he has some scripted tasks that allow him to do replication to other servers and automated restores, etc.

I have been trying to put those on tape with a Veeam Files to Tape job, but it lacks a lot of the sophistication that normal Veeam tape jobs have and I end up burning through a lot tapes. I can't do things like GFS or tell a full to only grab the latest, etc, so I have so many full restore points that seems to grab files that were already on previous full. If I decided to backup his backup server with a normal Veeam agent job, then I need basically double or triple the disk space, and add time to copy them across the network again, and these are big files.

I guess I have two questions.

1) Can anyone think of a reasonable way to back up these SQL generated backup files to tape using Veeam?

2) If not, is there a way he could do automated or scripted restores from a Veeam backup of the SQL database? If so, I might be able to convert him to using Veeam rather than SQL maintenance plan backups.

Thanks for any ideas.

[PetrM]

Hi Taylor,

At first sight, the option 2) seems to be more reasonable, at least because it's always easier to handle backup and restore tasks using a single application. We have a set of cmdlets for Veeam Explorer for SQL including Publish and Instant Recovery, it's designed exactly to address automated restore scenarios. Please have a look at this section of our PowerShell guide.

If maintenance plans are mandatory, then it's worth checking out File-level backup in Veeam Agent for Windows and File Copy job.

Thanks!