I'm dealing with a 3 different customers who are in the process of
migrating all their production Windows boxen to VMWare.
They are using VM-centric backup products (VEEAM, VDR, and VRanger) to
do the backups of their Windows systems at the .vmdk level.
The VM backup products back up to disk, TSM backs up that repository and
copies to tape for vaulting.
These products do file-level as well as full backups for the VM's so the
individual TSM baclient backups of the C: drive are being phased out, as
the systems move to VMWARE.
So now I'm confused as to when we need TDP for SQL backups.
(From here on I'll just refer to VEEAM, but I think all the
issues/questions are the same for VRanger and VDR.)
My understanding from talking to VEEAM, is that if
1) the data base on the VM is VSS-enabled (MSSQL is) and
2) the data base & logs are part of the .vmdk file (common for
small MSSQL dbs, uncommon for big or clustered MSSQL DB's which are
usually out in the SAN) and
3) the backup software has VSS support (VEEAM does)
Then when you do a backup with VEEAM, you DO get a transactionally
consistent, stable and usable copy of the DB in the VEEAM/VDR backup.
So if you reload your VM from the VEAAM backup, locally or at DR, you
get a working SQL back (along with its logs), and you don't have to use
the TDP to restore and roll forward.
So, assuming that conditions 1,2, and 3 are met, are there cases we
still need to use the TDP for SQL?
(Now I realize that many large production DB's are out on a SAN and not
part of a .vmdk so condition 2 is not met. But 90% of the MSSQL DB's I
run into are small, on local disk, and get installed as part of some
purchased application and nobody ever does more than a full backup of
them anyway --they breed at night and pop up everywhere).
How say you all?
Wanda Prather | Systems Integration Specialist | wprather AT icfi DOT com |
www.jasi.com
ICF Jacob & Sundstrom | 401 E. Pratt St, Suite 2214, Baltimore, MD
21202 | 410.539.1135
|
