Sharepoint w/ physical SQL server

[Zew]

Hey all,

I watched the Veeam Explorer for SharePoint webinar that is posted on Veeam. Now this webincar was created before v7 was fully released and displayed the beta. Now AFAIK I have heard it is possible to recover SharePoint files even if the SQL/DB isn't on the FE server directly as was required in the beta, including mounting the VM files and pointing to the SharePoint DB. I have read this requires a "staging SQL DB", and that express version of MS SQL can only support 10 GIG DB files. AFAIK Veeam uses express for itself for something, I never read that technical into the details, but could this instance of SQL be used for SharePoint recovery?

Question is I can't find a tutorial or video, on how to do this when the SQL server is not on the front end server. Could someone help point me in the right direction?

I need help on this as currently my SQL server is physical, however even once we move to virtualizing SQL it'll still be on a different server than the SharePoint Front-End server.

Thanks hope to hear from you guys!

[Andreas Neufert]

Veeam can work in a SharePoint farm where the components are on different servers. All of them are needed in a VM and backed up regulary parallel with Veeam.

So no support of a physical SQL Server in the SP farm.

Regarding restore:
v7/v8 of B&R need a lokal SQL Server for staging on the B&R (Management) Server itself.
Express do not fit in most cases here as it has a 10GB limitation.
The SQL Server on the B&R Server shoul meet the following requirements:
- Highest Version and Patch level that you run on any SQL or SP Server in your Virtual Environment.
- Highest Version (Standard/Enterprise/...) of SQL Server needed if you use special functions that are only available in a special SQL Version that you use in your production SQL Servers (that are running in your virtual environment).
- It does not matter if B&R run on a VM or physical

For v9 it was announced that the Stageing SQL Server can be an external SQL Server that do not run on B&R.

Why Veeam uses such an approach? Veeam do not want to bring customers to the point that they have to wait for updating the production SQL servers till the "backup" software support the actual patch level. With Veeam you just need to install the SQL patche from MS in production SQL Server and on the Veeam Server.

[Zew]

Just to mention here, You can take a native DB backup of a sharepoint instance, extract the mdf and ldf files from the .bak file (although no easy way to do this) and point Veeam Explorer to the mdf and ldf files and extract sharepoint files that way from a physical SQL server. I have tested this and it works.

As SQL doesn't seem to have a way to do a backup in native mdf/ldf files and only .bak files.. this is a little tricky task to complete. If MS SQL would have an extract/export option for DB instances (maybe in the SQL 2016) then one could technically backup a sharepoint farm for GRT from a physical SQL server. All one would have to do is either manually schedule a export/backup to a location accessible by Veeam and Veeam Explorer.

Just thought this was useful for people to know, its not impossible, just not plausible.

[Andreas Neufert]

Thanks for mentioning this Aemilanus,

yes, Veeam Explorers can work without a Veeam Backup.
All needed files can be added manually to a plain started Explorer. You have to select them manually.
In most cases it doesn´t matter if they are consistent or crash consistent (for example from a storage snapshot).
The above mentioned SQL requirements are valid as well for this manual approach.

If you Backup with Veeam and Veeam InGuest Processing, all needed files and components are added to the Veeam Explorers automatically.