SureBackup and SQL Server transaction logs

[Massimo Vitali]

Hi all,

I have just set up a Virtual Lab on our Veeam 11 installation and I am executing some recovery test on our VMs.
I am currently testing the recovery of an application group containing a Domain Controller VM and a SQL Server VM. The SQL Server instance uses full recovery model and the Veeam Backup Job executes the VM backup once a day and the Transaction Log backup every 15 minutes.
The SureBackup Job created with standard settings works fine and the SQL Server is successfully restored and tested at the state of the last VM restore point, but subsequent transaction logs are not automatically applied to the restored VM. Is there a way to instruct SureBackup to also restore all the transaction log subsequent the VM backup in order to have a complete restore test, or I have to manually apply the transaction logs to the restored VM in the isolated network to ensure that the full restore process is successful?

Thank you very much in advance for your help

Massimo

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi Massimo,

That's right, SureBackup will not apply backed up MS SQL Server transaction logs.

Few notes here:
- backed up transaction logs are used in Database recovery from backup, and cannot be applied on a different DB(in case of SureBackup that would treat testing machine DBs as a new). In other words, to replay logs on machine X, we will have to restore DB to machine X and replay logs after. That can be either entire DB restore or instant mount of DB from backup.
- we have a PowerShell integration that allows automated DB + logs recovery
- by adding a custom script into SureBackup validation process using this KB, you can automate DB restore\mount + log rollback on a machine running in a Virtual Lab

/Thanks!