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October 21st, 2013 06:00
Avamar and SQL
I am trying to figure out the best way to use Avamar to back up my SQL server VMs. I've been told that Avamar snapshots a VM and then will back up the snapshot while the VM stays up and updates go to the actual VM instead of the snapshot. The current tool we use for backup does the snapshot and any changes go to the snapshot. On a SQL server this can cause issues with the log disk.
How does Avamar handle this situation? I'd really like to have the VM image of the SQL servers for restoration purposes so I'd like to use the VM Image dataset in Avamar.
Thanks.
snowmizer1
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October 21st, 2013 07:00
In the past we've tried backing up SQL servers using VM Image backups and have had issues where the log disk fills up the LUN when the server is a busy server (e.g. servers with monitoring software that are constantly updating the database even outside of normal business hours). This has caused us to be hesitant to backup SQL Servers using VM image backups.
How are people handling this issue? Are people excluding the disk where the database files and log files reside?
Thanks.
snowmizer1
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October 21st, 2013 11:00
We're planning on using Litespeed to actually backup the databases themselves. So I really need to get a good way to get the actual VM. The databases themselves use the "simple" recovery model in most cases so the logs don't get large. I just know that in the past when we've used Veeam to backup a complete SQL server we had the LUN that had the log disk fill up (the server itself didn't run out of space in the VMDK). This was an issue with the actual free space on the LUN. I just want to avoid this issue.
I'm afraid to just set up a VM image backup and include everything on it because I know what we've gone through to fix this problem. Would I be better off setting up a VM image backup of everything except the LUN that has the log disk (and possibly the database disk)?
Thanks.
snowmizer1
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October 21st, 2013 14:00
Am I correct that if you do a Windows dataset backup you can use it to do what amounts to a bare metal restore? This may also solve our issue in that we're able to backup the entire VM without the snapshots causing an issue and then be able to restore the complete server as it sat at the time of the backups.
Thanks.