How do you tell SAP what type of backup has been run?

[HHansen]

Hi all,

We recently changed our SAP ERP backup from TSM to Veeam Backup & Replication, and everything is running fine, except that the backup reporting feature inside SAP thinks that all backups are full even though we run synthetic full on saturdays and forward incrementals on all other days. TSM was able to do the backup so that SAP could see which type of backup it was.

So there is no entries in the incremental/diffrential window inside SAP, but a lot in the full window.

The backup consists of a 2016 server with SQL standard on it, and then SAP on top. SQL is reporting everything as it should and im not in doubt that we are able to restore, but its just annoying to our superusers of SAP that they are not able to see these incrementals since they do not have access to SQL or Veeam for security reasons.

I havent reported this as a technical issue since its not an issue with Veeam itself, but something in between, so i wanted to hear if anyone else have run in to this "challenge"

Thanks!

[clemens.zerbe]

Hi,

this works as designed....
TSM has most likely used an SQL agent for backups and therefor the SAP ERP system sees the SAP agent backups regardless if they are full/incr/diff.
Veeam works as you already noticed different. We use VSS integration and Log backups additionally. From the database point of view - these VSS backups are always full backups.

The Veeam magic behind the scenes (taking incrementals for ever and doing synthetic full) is just not seen by the SQL database - and therefor not seen in the SAP ERP system. As long as your SAP basis people see each Veeam VSS enabled backup as full -> they should be more than fine from an restore & audit point of view.

If there are any additional questions do not hesitate to send me a PN.

Clemens

[HHansen]

Hi Clemens,

Thank you for your reply, it makes sense, and yes, it did use an SQL agent, it also reminds me that i forgot to write that the job is a physical server with the Veeam backup agent software installed and running application aware with SQL credentials, but if the SQL application aware is not enough for this to happen, i see no solution to this other than trust that Veeam will do the job, im not in doubt, but the superusers are not sysadmins so they get suspicious pretty quick

Maybe there are some post-backup script that can be run during the application aware processing?

[clemens.zerbe]

Hi,

SQL application awareness in Veeam - hopefully with log backup enabled - is more than enough. Veeam does the job - like always.
It´s just a different way how MS-SQL logs backups internally. Our VSS enabled backups are always seen as full inside the SQL database - regardless what you are doing/configuring in Veeam job.

And the SAP application just looks into the SQL backup log and finds/displays all backups there. Nothing to change here...just a different way of reporting. In my experience any super user/auditor is fine with full backups instead of incr/diff backups...as long as they can see backups at all.

Clemens

[HHansen]

Cool, thanks for the explanation, i will try to convey it to my superusers in a "understandable" way

[clemens.zerbe]

Good luck...could be sometimes harder than explaining the technology part