Backup busy and large MSSQL server

[Calypso]

I need to backup large and busy SQL server clusters with Veeam. We are talking 2TB-4TB machines that is always in production.

I have Veeam integration with EMC Unity all flash SAN via FC with physical Veeam (gateway/proxy). DBAs are hesitant of any VMWare snapshots, environment are very segmented and network team does not want backups to run through any firewalls.

Veeam server has local SSDs and data is being sent from Veeam to DataDomain via FC.

Interested in any thoughts and experience.

Cheers

[Andreas Neufert]

There are 2 options that you need to use likely in combination:
1) Install a Veeam Agent for Windows and backup the SQL server.
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

2) Bring all the VM disks to datastores with no other VMs in the same job. For Snapshot only processing we will not create then VM snapshots.
https://vzilla.co.uk/vzilla-blog/veeam- ... ery-points
https://www.veeam.com/blog/v10-storage- ... ments.html
If you use Instant VM Restore you need to boot the VM then to be able to do Storage vMotion. So boot the VM at least once in that DR scenatio because of VMware limitations arround CBT with Storage vMotion.

So you will have the Storage Snapshots for Instant Restore (DR) and the Agent for Point in time restore of the Databases.

[Calypso]

Thanks for the response Andreas. To clarify, the Storage Snapshot backups will stay on the storage and are just storage snapshots managed by Veeam, so in a case of storage failure they will be lost. Or can these be moved somewhere else?

Unfortunately it seems Veeam/Unity does not support Snapshot Orchestration, or am I looking at the wrong feature? https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=100

[foggy]

Hi Hugo, you're right, snapshot-only jobs are not available for Unity storage. So you either have to go with the first option provided by Andreas or justify the short period of time the VM runs on the snapshot during the backup from storage snapshot job.

[jamcool]

Even though our big SQL servers are in VMWARE, we went with agent for Windows backup. This allowed us to backup only critical drives and not entire server. Our DBA team backups SQL databases separately with a 3rd party product that gives them more flexibility than we could provide with Veeam Application backup. So in case of a DR, we recover C drive, initial SQL install (E drive) and few non database drive letters. We then re-create the blank drives and they recover the databases from a separate backup. Since our SQL servers are all built the same, we just specify what drive letters to backup and by adding the server to the protection group, it automatically gets backed up and copy backup to secondary datacenter. Also the agent backup does not snapshot the VM which our DBAs claim it "stuns" the databases causing disconnects for some systems not very forgiving when cannot get to the database. Backing up via VMWARE (taking snapshots) also causes problems with Microsoft SQL Alwayson clusters.