Veeam Backup for SQL Servers

[robc.yk]

Good Day Everyone,

Typically we have used the native SQL tools to backup our virtual SQL servers to the local VM and then used VCB and HP's DataProtector to grab those backup files.
We have about 40 SQL servers of various O/S and SQL versions. The oldest being Windows 2000 and SQL 2000. The newest being 2008 R2.
Since we had so many issure with HP's DP we have begun looking into Veeam's D&P product.

My questions are:

1 - Is there a need to still perform the local SQL backups using the native tools if we utalize Veeam? Some of our SQL DB's are nearing 1TB.
2 - Is there a more reliable option between the two, veeam backup or SQL tools?
3 - Is the Veeam backup the same quality as the SQL native tools in regards to it's consitant state? Crash vs. application?
4 - Does anyone have any examples or suggestions on thier configuration?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Rob C.

[tsightler]

1 - Is there a need to still perform the local SQL backups using the native tools if we utalize Veeam? Some of our SQL DB's are nearing 1TB.

Like the answer to so many questions, the answer to this would be "it depends". If you want to be able to apply logs and recover your databases to a specific "point-in-time" then you would still need native SQL tools, however, if you are happy with simply having specific "restore points" then you could backup only with Veeam.

2 - Is there a more reliable option between the two, veeam backup or SQL tools?

Both options can be very reliable, I wouldn't say one is more reliable that the other, but they are very different and take very different approaches. To me it is much easier to monitor and know that Veeam is working, but you can write notification scripts for native backups as well.

3 - Is the Veeam backup the same quality as the SQL native tools in regards to it's consitant state? Crash vs. application?

With SQL2000 on Windows 2000 you'd only have crash consistency, however, with all other versions, you can use Veeam VSS which would give you application consistent backups.

4 - Does anyone have any examples or suggestions on thier configuration?

Well, we use Veeam in combination with native tools based on the specific databases requirements. For our simple databases, where the goal is to simply restore the system as quickly as possible to the last backed up state, we use only Veeam. For more critical databases we use native tools, which write backups to a central repository. We still backup both the SQL server and the backup repository with Veeam. This gives us the best of all worlds, the ability to quickly restore a database server to a functional state, and the ability to perform a native restore to a point-in-time if required.

[robc.yk]

Thats great informaiton tsightler,

We are thinking of the same approach in using both tool sets (Veeam and SQL Tools) for the backups.

I would assume in this approach you have it set so that the Veeam backup will not trucate the logs so that the SQL Backups can do thier thing? If this is the case is there a way to set this as the default options for all veeam backup jobs or do we need to add each vm to the 'Advanced' tab in 'Guest Processing'? Or does it matter?

Are you scheduling your SQL tools backups outside of your Veeam window to prevent issues or does that not matter as well?

Thanks again for the input.

[Vitaliy S.]

If this is the case is there a way to set this as the default options for all veeam backup jobs or do we need to add each vm to the 'Advanced' tab in 'Guest Processing'? Or does it matter?

You can choose not to truncate logs for entire containers added to the jobs, no need to deal with each VM individually.