May 27, 2020 at 8:14 am
Dear Experts,
is it good to use Avamar backup for SQL Server, currently we are using Ola's scripts. Is there any issue with Avamar SQL Backup?
May 27, 2020 at 8:59 am
Never heard of it but from a quick google it seems its another DELL EMC product.
We did have Data Domain at one place I worked another DELL EMC product which was doing SQL backups even though we fought for it not to. Needless to say after about a month it was taken out and doing file based backups of BAK/TRN files created by Ola and maintenance plans etc as it took the RPO and RTO through the roof and backups restores where so slow from it.
Usually this is all down to how it de-dupes which is what Data Domain and looks to be Avamar's selling points, so if you have huge DB's it takes ages to backup. If you have high data rate change, then Avamar is not for you as you don't get the de-dupe benefits.
Also used CommVault again that never got to go anywhere near the SQL Databases and again was setup to do file based backups as it couldn't truncate the log when it was setup in a logshipping setup for DR at another place I worked.
Symantec / Backup Exec again avoided.
They may have just been setup incorrectly but my experience with appliances/software like that is to avoid.
Now I'm not saying all 3rd party backup tools are rubbish, we have used LiteSpeed and SQLBackup without issue these work a treat, but the big names out there who sell you these appliances I have yet to see one that actually works well with SQL.
Nothing for me beats native backups, "if it isn't broke don't fix it"
May 27, 2020 at 11:02 am
I'm not aware of this tool, so no real comment on it one way or the other.
However, the rules for any 3rd party solution for backups are very simple. Show me a restore. Show me a single database restore. Show me a restore to a point in time. Show me how we can absolutely meet our current Recovery Time Objective (or beat it) and our Recovery Point Objective (or beat it). Show me all that, then that is a great 3rd party tool and we should absolutely use it.
Fail any of these points and the discussion is over. We're going back to bog-standard SQL Server backups. No arguments. No discussions. No need to get heated, worked up or exercised.
It's all that easy. It's actually all that important.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
May 27, 2020 at 4:08 pm
Never heard of it but from a quick google it seems its another DELL EMC product.
We did have Data Domain at one place I worked another DELL EMC product which was doing SQL backups even though we fought for it not to. Needless to say after about a month it was taken out and doing file based backups of BAK/TRN files created by Ola and maintenance plans etc as it took the RPO and RTO through the roof and backups restores where so slow from it.
Usually this is all down to how it de-dupes which is what Data Domain and looks to be Avamar's selling points, so if you have huge DB's it takes ages to backup. If you have high data rate change, then Avamar is not for you as you don't get the de-dupe benefits.
Also used CommVault again that never got to go anywhere near the SQL Databases and again was setup to do file based backups as it couldn't truncate the log when it was setup in a logshipping setup for DR at another place I worked.
Symantec / Backup Exec again avoided.
They may have just been setup incorrectly but my experience with appliances/software like that is to avoid.
Now I'm not saying all 3rd party backup tools are rubbish, we have used LiteSpeed and SQLBackup without issue these work a treat, but the big names out there who sell you these appliances I have yet to see one that actually works well with SQL.
Nothing for me beats native backups, "if it isn't broke don't fix it"
Thanks Anthony. The reason for avamar backup is that the business continuity team dont want to see the time required to copy backup from Staging Location to new Business continuity server.
May 27, 2020 at 4:11 pm
I'm not aware of this tool, so no real comment on it one way or the other.
However, the rules for any 3rd party solution for backups are very simple. Show me a restore. Show me a single database restore. Show me a restore to a point in time. Show me how we can absolutely meet our current Recovery Time Objective (or beat it) and our Recovery Point Objective (or beat it). Show me all that, then that is a great 3rd party tool and we should absolutely use it.
Fail any of these points and the discussion is over. We're going back to bog-standard SQL Server backups. No arguments. No discussions. No need to get heated, worked up or exercised.
It's all that easy. It's actually all that important.
Thanks Grant .. Can you suggest any tool to reduce the RTO?
The exact reason is the BC team want to reduce the RTO from 100 minutes we mentioned with natively SQL backup which involves a copy job of file from file server(staging Location before data domain backup) , the dont want to see that copy job there and want everything to happen in one click.
May 27, 2020 at 5:03 pm
Used Symantec / Backup Exec, then switched to Avamar Backup. But I only use native backup on sql server side; once the backup is done, backup team can back up the native backup, this was the common practice for 10 years.
Rackspace uses CommVault, it's handled by Rackspace only. I cannot use the backup and restore somewhere else, it's not per database. I have to use native backup to generate a copy only backup so that I can use it on staging.
I use Ola's maintenace solution, it works great.
May 27, 2020 at 5:53 pm
Thanks Grant .. Can you suggest any tool to reduce the RTO?
The exact reason is the BC team want to reduce the RTO from 100 minutes we mentioned with natively SQL backup which involves a copy job of file from file server(staging Location before data domain backup) , the dont want to see that copy job there and want everything to happen in one click.
Log shipping? Availability Groups? Something other than just native backups would work better for what you're describing. However, again, nothing wrong with using this tool if it can do what you need it to do. Just test it and verify it's going to do exactly what's intended, consistently and accurately. Don't take anyone's word for it. Test it.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
May 27, 2020 at 6:48 pm
Used Symantec / Backup Exec, then switched to Avamar Backup. But I only use native backup on sql server side; once the backup is done, backup team can back up the native backup, this was the common practice for 10 years.
Rackspace uses CommVault, it's handled by Rackspace only. I cannot use the backup and restore somewhere else, it's not per database. I have to use native backup to generate a copy only backup so that I can use it on staging.
I use Ola's maintenace solution, it works great.
Thanks Sterling
May 27, 2020 at 6:50 pm
VastSQL wrote:Thanks Grant .. Can you suggest any tool to reduce the RTO?
The exact reason is the BC team want to reduce the RTO from 100 minutes we mentioned with natively SQL backup which involves a copy job of file from file server(staging Location before data domain backup) , the dont want to see that copy job there and want everything to happen in one click.
Log shipping? Availability Groups? Something other than just native backups would work better for what you're describing. However, again, nothing wrong with using this tool if it can do what you need it to do. Just test it and verify it's going to do exactly what's intended, consistently and accurately. Don't take anyone's word for it. Test it.
Thanks Grant. Was thinking about AG , will put forward these options.
June 2, 2020 at 9:57 am
Our experience with avamar us it's complete rubbish at doing backups and restores direct to database.
I'd do native SQL backups and use avamar to backup the SQL backup files.
June 16, 2020 at 8:38 pm
My opinion after using it for two years is STAY AWAY.
We use it in the enterprise for Windows, SQL, Oracle, Hana etc. I can't speak to anything but SQL; but, we have issues where Avamar skips some DB's in both Full backups and TLog backups (known as Incremental in the product). Also, some Avamar backup jobs hang and must be canceled. If you want to schedule TLog backups every 5 minutes for mission critical DB's your going to have to use a command line and a SQL Agent job as the Avamar scheduler can't do it. The de-dupe function works great as we can now take full backups nightly and never do Diffs anymore; however, it's still way faster to do a SQL Native backup or Lightspeed backup to local disk that to use Avamar to sling it over the network.
We have to baby sit Avamar every day (including weekends and holidays) by canceling hung jobs and kicking off backups to cover the skipped DB's. For example, an hourly TLog backup for an instance hangs up - no other backup jobs will run on that instance until the hung job is canceled so your TLog's will fill up and autogrow OR your full backups can't run (queued up and terminated after a set interval). EMC has been working on fixing the issue for two years and are currently fighting it out with Microsoft. I wish it worked without issues; however, if you want to schedule backups of all DBs on all servers and expect it to protect run smoothly without manual intervention I wish you well.
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