SQL backups

[mellerbeck]

Can someone help me understand the role that Veeam plays with SQL backups. If I'm reading correctly it looks like veeam will trigger the sql server vss writer to make an application consistent backup. (It appears that using the VMware Tools Quiescence is not recommended for SQL)

How does this play into the typical scenario of a full daily backup, with log backups every hour.

I read in this post http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... ogs#p13825

That he

-- schedules all the usual SQL backups (full, transaction logs, etc) and store these on the SQL server itself; and then
-- use Veeam to backup the entire server

If there's a SQL problem, the backups on the server will usually be sufficient to restore anything necessary. If there's a "whole of server" problem, I have Veeam to recover the entire image.

Is this a good approach, is there a best practice document for this sort of situation?

[mellerbeck]

bump, is there a best practice doc for configure SQL with veeam?

[Gostev]

Michael, no special configuration is needed as we perform image-level backup. The approach quoted above is good in case you also perform SQL backup with some other "traditional" tools, in addition to image-level backup. Thanks!

[jayoung]

Hi,

Can I query image-level backup of SQL? Is this putting the guest into "suspend" or "Freeze" mode then running the DB backup?

One of our problems is that my higher management don't feel confident in adopting Veeam because I haven't been able to definitely prove we can provide transaction level consistent restores. They'd prefer to continue doing traditional backup.

We run quite a few databases that are *realtime* on Oracle/SQL/Gupta and getting downtime on them has been a problem. Clear communication on how this is done from yourselves in the form of a video or whitepaper would be really useful.

I understand that an image-level backup is "crash consistent" is this correct.

[Gostev]

I understand that an image-level backup is "crash consistent" is this correct.

Yes, from OS perspective it is always crash-consistent as the snapshot is taken when OS is running, and because OS is not shutdown, you will always get the "improper shutdown" notification when starting up VM restored from such backup. But from applications perspective, the backup is transactionally consistent, because our VSS integration quiesces all VSS-aware applications to ensure that no transaction data is lost.

Can I query image-level backup of SQL? Is this putting the guest into "suspend" or "Freeze" mode then running the DB backup?

No, guest continues to run, there are no notable interruptions. As for SQL freeze, we are no differenr from "traditional" backup solutions, as use the same SQL VSS writer to quiesce SQL.

One of our problems is that my higher management don't feel confident in adopting Veeam because I haven't been able to definitely prove we can provide transaction level consistent restores.

Why, did you have any issues during POC?

We run quite a few databases that are *realtime* on Oracle/SQL/Gupta and getting downtime on them has been a problem. Clear communication on how this is done from yourselves in the form of a video or whitepaper would be really useful.

There are links to 2 great articles about VSS and image-level backups from industry expert available in the stickied FAQ topic. They explain very well how transaction consistent image-level backups can be achieved with solutions like Veeam, and how it works. If these do not convince your management, then I do not know what else can

Generally, SQL is one of the most common apps our customers virtualize. There are zero issues with backing up and restoring SQL on image level with Veeam VSS integration enabled. Your management's concern problem come from early virtualization days 10 years ago, when there were no VSS in Windows, and VMware using their SYNC driver to quiesce file system, that had issues with heavy I/O workload servers data when taking snapshot.

[jayoung]

Hi Anton,

I had a read of http://download-uk.oracle.com/docs/cd/B ... 10/vss.htm and that is a hard one to discount.

I've also had a read of some of the MSSQL documentation on MSDN and it's 'wooly' when you start digging into how a process gets put into a quiessent state. I was looking for the 'stickied FAQ topic' you referred to, can you post the url as I don't see the hyperlink. Possibly just being thick.

[Gostev]

I read your link very fast - did you imply something negative is stated there? (I did not notice). Although anyway, running Oracle on VMware is a subject I try to stay away from (too politicized and too much FUD intentionally spread by Oracle).

FAQ is on the top of the Veeam Backup and Replication forum, see Announcements block.

Here's the direct link to VSS post:
[FAQ] Veeam Backup v4 : Frequently Asked Questions : Answers