Planning for Transactionally Consistent Backups Question

[NerfHerder]

Hi All,
I am creating jobs that backup groups of computers by selecting VM folders (in vSphere) on the backup job --> virtual machines dialog.
In many cases, these groups will contain a mix of file servers, application servers, SQL database servers.
In this case, I enable application aware processing and specify credentials on the backup job --> guest processing dialog.
Since I don't want to perform application aware processing on all the included VMs, I can click Applications, and then:
1. Add application aware processing settings for the SQL VM included in the job, and
2. disable application aware processing for the VM folder object
https://imgur.com/xbZib3G

Does this approach make sense, or am I making things more complicated or...?

Also - for those of you backing up SQL Servers with Veeam...
* Are you using Veeam for image and log backups?
* If so, how often do you do log backups?

Given the example job above, if I enable SQL backups for one of the VMs in the backup job, and then also enable TX log backup every 15 minutes (as an example)... The "child" backup job that gets created for the TX logs... will that then be performing a forever forward incremental for all the VMs in the job every 15 minutes?

Thanks in advance!
~D

[PetrM]

Hello,

I'm curious to know why you don't want to perform AAIP on all included VMs?
It's highly recommended for Windows machines as it provides consistent state of data in backup by leveraging VSS framework.
If there are Linux VMs in the container, I recommend to select this checkbox additionally to quiesce VMs that do not support Microsoft VSS.

Answering the questions above:
1. "Are you using Veeam for image and log backups?" - Yes, this is a reliable way because it allows you to orchestrate all backup and recovery tasks using a single backup application.
One more advantage of this approach is that PIT restore will be available in Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL.

2. "If so, how often do you do log backups?" - The log backup interval will depend on the required RPO: the amount of data which can be lost before significant harm to the business occurs.
For example, if you cannot lose more than 15 minutes of work, then you’ll need to produce transaction log backups every 15 minutes.

3. "will that then be performing a forever forward incremental for all the VMs in the job every 15 minutes?" - the transaction log backup job ships transaction logs to the backup repository
at a specific time interval which is configured in backup job settings. You can retain logs according to the image-level backup settings or according to the specified number of days.
Please refer to our help center for more details.

Thanks!

[NerfHerder]

Hi PetrM,
Thanks for the reply;

In regards to the Application Aware Processing... I guess I hadn't thought about it that way. I was just focusing on things like SQL Server instances. Maybe I will start enabling this by default on all jobs.

As for the frequency of log backups, of course the company's RPO needs to be taken into consideration. I am new to Veeam though so am still learning, and may be treating it a little like a "learn in production lab"... (scary, I know ); Anyway... after reading through the admin guide section on SQL Server Logs Backup and Restore and the Explorers User Guide, it is starting to make more sense. I see how a full image backup will occur, which will trigger the log backup child job that backs up logs at the defined interval until the next full image backup is set to begin.

Thank you!
~D