VCB with Exchange/SQL or local database
I'm running NetBackup 6.5.3 on Windows Server 2003. My master server is in a virtual machine, along with many other applications I'd like to backup using Vmware's VCB 1.5, such as Exchange and SQL.
VCB/Vmware tools is using Windows VSS writer for quiecing the file system before backups, not the old Sync driver.
My question is, what is the recommended backup method for a virtual machine hosting a local database like Exchange, SQL or NetBackup with the EMM database? Can they be snapped? Will the VCB backup quiesce all the writes that are currently in memory on the server before quiescing the file system? I'm trying to avoid database, but at the same time be able to provide a quick recovery of the server if it goes down and I need to recover it.
If anyone is successfully using VCB to captuer both incremental and full backups of a virtual machine running Exchange, SQL and/or any other application that has a local database, I'd like ot know if you've experienced any problems.
Thanks.
Comments
VCB & MS-SQL
In our environment we use the MS-SQL Agent and Netbackup client to backup the SQL database even if it is running in a VM. Then we use the VCB backup to backup the entire VM (to get the system/vmdk).
It can be tempting to think that because the system is in a quiesced snapshot state, you should be able to get a good backup of your MS-SQL database. However when the snap occurs, it does not check the current state of the MS-SQL database. Meaning, you could be snapping a state where in the event you have to restore that database from the VCB backup, it might not be in a usable state for MS-SQL.
In a restore scenario, we do a two step process, we restore the VM first and then restore the databases backed up with the agent.
I believe in the long run this would be the best practice.
Regards,
Benjamin Schmaus
It was discussed before, please revisit these articles
https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/vss...
In this article, LeeClayton explained nice and easy.
From that article, my understanding is,
- Yes VSS does take care of
- However, no we should not rely on it as it is not the application level backup, to be exact
- And we should run database backups on individual guests, to continue truncate log, get incr backups
Anger Management
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