PowerProtect Data Manager 19.9 Microsoft Application Agent SQL Server User Guide

Configure backups to use the same DD path

To ensure the consistency of the backups on the DD system, configure all the backups of a SQL Server instance to use the same DD system and path.

Configure connection settings

DD Boost devices do not distinguish among Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/Internet Protocol (IP), Fibre Channel (FC), and LAN, WAN, and MAN network types. DD Boost devices can successfully operate where packet loss is strictly 0% and latency is less than 20 ms.

Use supported characters

The Microsoft application supports locale-specific date and time processing and setting the date and time display language to non-English characters. However, the database name, hostname, instance name, Windows cluster name, virtual server name, and pathnames must be written in ASCII characters only. Naming conventions for backups with Application Direct provides more information on supported characters for database and instance names.

Configure DD quota limits

The Microsoft application agent does not have a parameter to control the total size that it consumes. The quota limits can only be set on the DD system on a per-MTree (storage unit) basis.

An MTree's quota limits are calculated based on the logical size, which is the size before compression and de-duplication of the data.

The quota limits impact only backup operations.

Configuring usage limits of DD resources provides more information about quota limit, impact of exceeding the limits, and configuring the usage limits.

Configure usage limits for DD streams

Configure a sufficient number of DD streams for better performance of backups and restores. The streams control backup and restore parallelism for each database.

The Microsoft application agent requires one stream per save set that you back up or restore. When you perform striped backups, each stripe requires one stream. The stripes are concurrently run for each database. Databases are sequentially backed up and restored. When you use stripes, the number of streams must be equal to or more than the number of stripes.

The minimum number of streams for a non-stripe environment is 1.

Configuring usage limits of DD streams provides more information about streams limit, impact of exceeding the limits, and configuring the usage limits.

Delete expired backups by using the ddbmexptool expiry tool

The Microsoft application agent does not delete the expired backup copies automatically. You must explicitly delete the expired backup copies by using the ddbmexptool expiry tool.