October 30, 2014 at 2:26 pm
I am setting up Azure IaaS and was wondering if anyone else had used the backup to Azure file storage options.
I see that you can basically set a Microsoft filestorage URL as a remote backup device and do your backups.
What I am NOT clear on is it mentions system databases are not supported.
Does that really mean I can't backup master, model, msdb?
Has anyone else worked with this at all? Experiences, etc?
November 3, 2014 at 9:28 pm
I looked into Azure blob storage backups for a client to satisfy offsite back requirements and found it relatively easy to setup, however the bandwidth requirements were strict and high. I kept getting timeouts trying to take backups and ended up bailing out on the solution and going to local backups to disk plus robocopy over a dedicated VPN to an offsite location. This was very close to when it was first introduced so maybe things have gotten better. I also remember there being an odd situation when a backup did timeout that required me to run a PowerShell command to release the blob storage object so I could attempt another backup. Not sure if you're referring to remote blob storage for a local instance or something else, so hope that helps.
There are no special teachers of virtue, because virtue is taught by the whole community.
--Plato
November 4, 2014 at 5:52 am
Yeah, I did a bit more digging and they seem to have two types:
The first is just selecting URL and doing backup to blob storage.
Treats it just like a different backup location.
I'm running this in Azure IaaS so pretty fast data transfer from there at least.
Second: letting SQL manage the backups, which is a bit more interesting. I have tried and used the first option, but not this one.
Best I tell you setup a storage duration window and then it apparently runs some dynamic scripting to determine when and what to backup. Full, deltas, logs, etc.. again I'm not entirely clear on the details and I have NOT tried this.
But it looks like you just specify how long to keep backups and it dynamically determines granularity and perhaps(?) watches for data change frequency and performs backup actions as needed.
However, it says that it does NOT support backing up the system databases. So that was a no go for me and I just stuck with backup to URL/file storage.
I may look into it further down the road.
Link to SQL Managed Backup: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn449496.aspx
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