Agent Back vs vSphere Backup Exchange / SQL DAG's

[davefraser83]

Hi

i am fairly new to administering Veeam and have a question around Exchange DAG backup and the best practices for it, in that is it best to use the vSphere backup or use the Windows Agent backup and create a protection group?

And if you use the Agent based backup is it still good to keep the vSphere backup to do full sever restore ?

Would the same also be true for SQL AAG / DAG always on clusters also?

Dave

[Dima P.]

Hello Dave,

At the moment there is no big difference between agent backup and VM backup in terms of processing and restore options. From backup perspective you have to use job chaining if you want to protect every DAG node (both for VM backup and agent backup), for restore side of things all similar options are provided (except you cannot do Instant VM recovery or entire VM restore to VMware from backup file made by agent). Cheers!

[davefraser83]

Hi Dima

Thanks for the response!!! So Vmware based backups is fully supported by Veeam and allows for Item level recovery of Exchange?

It's quite confusing as most of the Veeam documentation is not explicitly clear on what you need to do or setup.

Dave

EDIT: would this be same for a SQL enterprise Always on Cluster you can use with Agent of VMware backup?

[Dima P.]

So Vmware based backups is fully supported by Veeam and allows for Item level recovery of Exchange?

Sure. Check this Using Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange article in order to get more information about application item recovery for Exchange.

It's quite confusing as most of the Veeam documentation is not explicitly clear on what you need to do or setup.

I guess it's a bit tricky, but once you get familiar with it - it works like a charm

would this be same for a SQL enterprise Always on Cluster you can use with Agent of VMware backup?

Sure.