Veeam For Database Backups?

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Veeam For Database Backups?

Tom Uellner

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April 19, 2016 at 9:12 am

#400042

I've looked around the forums and I haven't found anything on the current version of Veeam and I'm curious what the current thinking is on using Veeam for database backups. From the documentation I've read, it seems that it will now take transaction log backups after the full snapshot so it does support point in time database restores to whatever interval we want (15 minutes in our case). It does not seem to allow different log backup times for different databases. More of a one size fits all approach.
Our networking team is pushing hard for us to use Veeam for our database backups as they constantly complain about the disk space usage of growing databases and backups. Since Veeam takes snapshots that are only the changes in the VM from the last snapshot, they save a lot of disk space and they see this as a big win for database backups. I'm less comfortable with giving up native SQL Server backups. It means I will have to depend completely on the networking team to test restores, etc. I'm also concerned about what happens if one of the snapshots in the chain is lost or corrupted. Does that make the backup unusable?
I might very well be overly paranoid about this but I'd love to hear opinions from the community.
Thanks,
-Tom

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jeff.mason SSCrazy Eights Points: 9585 More actions · Answer 1

There are getting to be many products like this (cf Actifio). This is probably a push that DBAs will need to learn to live with. All I can tell you is that you need to test the crap out of this in every possible scenario (including all restore types, including AlwaysOn, and pay close attention to failover clustering as that causes these products fits). Also make sure that your leadership knows that they are betting the protection of their data on this newer product; can they sleep well at night with assurance that in a catastrophe they could do a restore? But I anticipate more and more this will become standard for us DBAs, this or else backups in AWS/Azure which we do not participate in.

Tom Uellner SSCrazy Points: 2995 More actions · Answer 2

Thanks Jeff. I had seen a couple mentions of problems with AlwaysOn. We're not using AlwaysOn yet but it's one more thing to be concerned about.

ManicStar SSCoach Points: 17992 More actions · Answer 3

TUellner (4/19/2016)
Thanks Jeff. I had seen a couple mentions of problems with AlwaysOn. We're not using AlwaysOn yet but it's one more thing to be concerned about.

VEEAM doesn't work well with Always On. If the AG becomes unhealthy for any reason, even user suspended movement, VEEAM will just start erring out and not recover automatically.

Tom Uellner SSCrazy Points: 2995 More actions · Answer 4

Manic Star (4/19/2016)
TUellner (4/19/2016)
Thanks Jeff. I had seen a couple mentions of problems with AlwaysOn. We're not using AlwaysOn yet but it's one more thing to be concerned about.
VEEAM doesn't work well with Always On. If the AG becomes unhealthy for any reason, even user suspended movement, VEEAM will just start erring out and not recover automatically.

Good to know. I'll bring this up in discussions with out network guys and the vendor and see what they say.