Test SQL backup log

[JosueM]

Good day everyone,

What's the right way to test the SQL backup log restore, I did restore on a isolated network but that does not work cuz the veeam server does no have access to the restored serverd.

If I restore it to production and change the server name , stil the sql instance name remains the same.

Any idea or suggestion?

[nielsengelen]

There are a few options you can choose from:

- You can export them and then use those files on a temporary server.
- You can perform a restore to a temporary server.
- You can restore to the production server and rename the database.

[JosueM]

hello vmniels,

Well our objective is to assure that server and dblog restore works OK, that's why first we restore the server to another location and isolated network. According your suggestion we need to have another server in production enviroment to restore the db. If my understandings are ok, we will have to make two tasks. 1) restore the server to assure vm backup is fine 2) restore the DB to ANOTHER server to ensure the DB log restore is working fine.

Please let me kwno if there is a way to verify both in a single task. thanks in advance.

[nielsengelen]

If you are talking about the isolated network do you mean you are using a virtual lab by Veeam (which you can also use for SureBackup to test your database)? SureBackup will test the full server however.

If you want to test specific log restores then you'll have to either restore it to the production server under another name and restore the log files into the new temp server (your option 1) or restore the DB to another server (your option 2).

[JosueM]

The entire story is I started to look the backup log recently because vm backup cannot be done during working hours cuz it causes users to disconnect this happens principal in the snapshot creation/deletion phase we upgraded the production storage for this server to SSD but the ping timeouts still happens so users get disconnected.

Since this is a transactional server we would like to have more recent copies of data and not only one copy per day cuz if shomehting happens lets say about 5:00pm all the data from 8:00am to 5:00pm will be lost cuz last full backup was done the night before.

This vm server is about 1.5 TB and db size is about 1.3 TB so is no possible o have another production server for restring because of storage space limitations.

[nielsengelen]

You could use instant VM recovery and power on the backup and then test the restore.

All you need to do is power on the VM without internet connection, then login to it via vSphere client and give it another IP. Then you can simulate a restore via VESQL into this server.

This way you don't need to preserve 1.3TB additional storage directly.