Hi Steve,

You pretty much hit the nail on the head.
For your use case, legacy backup still offers the simplest
and most versatile solution. Since you don't have an
immediate need for leveraging hardware snapshots
or offloadeded backups, you don't need to use VSS.
For SQL Server, legacy backups (VDI) still offer the
widest backup and restore features and are the most
efficient when it comes to data transferred and stored
on the TSM Server.

As for TSM for VE, if your SQL Servers are virtualized,
and you begin to protect your VMs using TSM for VE,
the good news is that you can back up your entire VM
containing a running SQL Server, but still use
Data Protection for SQL to restore a single SQL Server
database from that TSM for VE backup. You can even
combine it with Data Protection for SQL log backups
if you want. We published a whitepaper titled
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Protecting Microsoft SQL
Databases Hosted in VMware on how to do that:

     https://ibm.biz/BdRVbA

This means you can use TSM for VE to back up your entire VM
leveraging incremental forever, and still restore
single a SQL Server database from those backups.


Del

----------------------------------------------------

"ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT vm.marist DOT edu> wrote on 07/24/2014
11:55:45 PM:

> From: Steven Harris <steve AT STEVENHARRIS DOT INFO>
> To: ADSM-L AT vm.marist DOT edu
> Date: 07/24/2014 11:56 PM
> Subject: TDP for MSSQL VSS and best practice
> Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT vm.marist DOT edu>
>
> Having managed to finally get my customers to set up some new
> infrastructure with V6 TSM servers, I'm now going through the process
> of upgrading clients.
>
> The 5.5 TDP for SQL has long been in use, is well understood and is
> stable.  The new TDP version 7.1 that we are moving to now has the
> option of VSS or legacy backups. I understand that VSS backups are
> essential if we need to offload backup processing or use hardware
> snapshots, or multiple local VSS restore points in the one day, but
> most of our SQL apps are small backup-in-full-once-a-day affairs.  I
> feel inclined to continue to use legacy backup for these, mostly
> because of the set-up overhead and complexity for VSS.
>
> What is best practice?  If you use both legacy and VSS, what criteria
> inform that choice? Does TSM for VE significantly affect the equation?
> (I don't have that yet, but the writing is on the wall)
>
> Regards
>
> Steve.