Evil new network manager
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The company I work for is finally changing the network over to a domain-based versus workgroup. Our new network manager says we have to re-install SQL Server for it to show up in Active Directory. Is this necessarily true? From the properties tab of the registered SQL instance, one can change the startup service account & add the server to Active Directory. This seems to work fine for me, but am I missing something here? He keeps ranting about "when we get Exchange..." (we have a Mac email server now). I'm concerned about uninstalling SQL & reinstall SQL on our production box, plus moving the dbs, etc. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
The company is also finally getting some backup software in here. The network manager wants to backup the databases using Veritas directly. I've been reviewing the posts on this site about Veritas & it looks like a majority of you are using the native SQL tools & having Veritas pick up the files afterwards. We currently are using the native SQL backup to a local drive (full backups once a night + logs every hour) with full offsite backups to CD/DVD once a week + OS level backup (registry) using the Windows native backup tool. The new network manager hates all of that & wants to use Veritas to tape for everything. I'm concerned about the speed of doing this for restores plus the network folks would control everything! I would have to go to them for a restore which would suck!!
Any advice on the best way to backup SQL Server would be greatly appreciated as I need to come up with a plan of attack on this. Any advice on how to handle the "god complex" with network managers would be hugely appreciated too. 
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You shouldn't need to even change the userid from LocalSystem. Just register the MS Server in the domain.
Ref
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;811889 and
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/ad/ad/dswriteaccountspn.asp.
If you aren't using the LocalSystem account, you need to be using a Domain Admin account. This is bad juju.
I don't have experience with Veritas. However with Arcserve and Backup Express I have had zero (actually highly negative numbers) success in using there SQL and Oracle agents. We do the backups using the SQL agent dumping to disk. I even had a consultant agree with me that using the agents is asking for problems.
As far as your manager having a "god complex"....Document EVERYTHING! Keep it in a pearl harbor file and when he screws up pull out the paper and show his manager that "you told him so."
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Jim P.A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.
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For the backups.
Having your backups only on tape is not as safe as having backups ("Dumps") on both tape and disk. If you need to quickly restore data having it on disk would expedite the process.
Your current process of only talking the dumps from disk to tape (CD) once a week exposes your orginazation to unnecessary risk. At a minimum you should be going to offsite tape once a day.
Going only to tape you need to be concerned if the latest tape can be read. Tapes are more subject to I-O errors than disk. You must always be aware that any tape may not be readable. Also, are you planning to maintain two copies of each tape (one for offsite and one for onsite). Remember never plan for only 1 path to recover your data. Assuming that you keep your log dumps for multiple days (between full dumps), you can always run forward recovery from an older database backup to restore the database in the case that you cannot read the latest database backup.
Your current process uses both daily and hourly (log dumps) in order to secure the data. How is the Veritas backup handing the "log dump" portion of the backup procedure?
Before beginning to use Veritas you should fully test the product. How will you restore a database that has been destroyed just before the Veritas backup runs?
Rick
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We use Veritas Net Backup and Backup Express. We still dump everything to disk and only keep 2 days on disk and 1 day worth of trans logs on disk, everything else is sent offsite the next day. With our rotation I can go back 3 months for a database and a point in time recovery of an hour. Veritais will back them up fine but good luck verifying the backup afterwards. Rick is right about tapes and the problems with them. Document everything.
Good Luck
Frank
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Aha, a new network-rooster a the barn
wanting to galvanize so (s)he is thé employee of the year !1) Don't panic (I know it's hard)
2) keep note of _all_ demands (because these are not to be considered requests) of this new rooster, so you can examine them one by one, make an inventory and add-on your check-results and conclusions
3) don't set (yes this is something you do yourself) to tight deadlines. Give yourself the chance to learn from this occasion.
4) have your (top)-manager involved in the project, once you've had a first glimp regarding technical issues.
5) we also use veritas for FILE-copies ! We make sql-backups according to each server's SLA to a local drive and have veritas copy them to tape.
6) because we keep the local backup-files (and only delete them when creating new ones), we don't need veritas for a restore, unless someone asks a restore from a couple of months ago. This is certainly _not_ restored to the production server.
7) is it needed for your company to have your sqlservers registered in AD ?
probably your rooster is just jumping to the new buzzword.
8) take your time to learn some AD yourself !
9) don't blow up all communiation, you will still have to work together ! Just proove you rooster you can match him at _your_ domain (including sqlserver networking !). Once that's been sorted out, he'll come along
Johan
Learn to play, play to learn !Dont drive faster than your guardian angel can fly ...
but keeping both feet on the ground wont get you anywhere :w00t:- How to post Performance Problems
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press F1 for solution, press shift+F1 for urgent solution 😀
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Thank you very much for all your replies! All of this is very helpful...especially thinking of the new network manager as a farm animal.
In regards to the backups, should they be located on a LOCAL drive or NETWORKED drive for Veritas to back them up to tape? My concern with networked drive is what happens with the backup if the network is down.
Thanks again.
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We use a local drive.
Besides, if the network is down -- how is Veritas going to see any servers anyway?
Also to throw another wrench at it anyway....you can't back up SQL to mapped drives -- you have to use the UNC.
And add on top of that, you want to keep 2-3 day of fulls on the server and 1-2 days of tran logs on the local server anyway. That way the start of your recovery time is minutes, not hours (waiting for backups to be restored). 
In my case I keep 3 days of fulls and 2 days of tran logs. We use backup express to pick up the differentials off of a local drive on the SQL Server.
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Jim P.A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.
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I use Veritas SQL agents to backup full backups strait to tape. In another life at another company I had problems with tape backups but so far all is well. The tape system was already bought and on the way when I changed jobs to this one, so I had no input into this decision. I did test of course until I think the network guys were tired of testing backups. It is a pain to ask for tape restores every time I need a backup - and most backups I use are for development and training kind of issues so I wind up making new backups to use myself instead of bothering to get it from tape. I agree it is easier and can be better to go to disk first if you have the space. I do go to disk (on other servers) with the TLOG backups, also once an hour, and those go to tape with the file system stuff. I think the backup agents complicate the restore process because the agent tries to make it to easy.
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