Use these tips and recommendations to efficiently protect your Microsoft SQL Server environment using Barracuda Backup.
Microsoft SQL Server protection:
- The Barracuda Backup Agent must be installed on each SQL server
- SQL backups can either leverage Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) or Virtual device Interface (VDI) technologies
- Backup up Microsoft SQL using VSS provides full and differentials backups, while using VDI provides full and incremental backups
- Unless there is a specific need or requirement for differential backups, Barracuda Networks recommends using VDI to protect Microsoft SQL
- Microsoft recommends using VDI for Microsoft SQL backup; for more information, see the TechNet article
- Perform test restores periodically to ensure disaster recovery and data recovery scenarios produce expected results
- Ensure that SQL is not being backed up by more than one backup solution; using more than one backup solution can cause issues with Log backups and possibly result in data corruption
- Verify backups complete successfully before attempting any maintenance within the SQL environment
- If point-in-time restores are required, the database must be set to use the Full Recovery Model and the Barracuda Backup Agent must be set to perform SQL VDI backups which performs full and transaction log backups
- When databases are set to use the Simple Recovery Model:
- Full and differential (VSS) backups can be performed
- Transaction log backups cannot be performed
- By default, the Barracuda Backup Agent users the Local System account to back up SQL databases
- If SQL is configured to use Mixed Mode Authentication and the Local System account is denied access, the Microsoft SQL Server Requires Authentication option must be selected and credentials for the account specified
- If SQL is configured to use a Maintenance Plan for backups, there are two options:
- The Maintenance Plan must be disabled to allow Barracuda Backup to back up the SQL database to avoid backup failure
- Continue to use Maintenance Plans and deselect the Microsoft SQL portion when configuring the SQL data source. Continue to back up File Systems and System State; files created by the Maintenance Plan are backed up as part of the File System backup
Barracuda Backup provides the ability to:
- Select individual or multiple databases for backup
- Protect Microsoft SQL failover clusters
Perform regular Complete SQL database backups weekly through Backup Schedules:
- Set your Backup type to Smart mode to allow Barracuda Backup to automatically determine whether Complete or Log backup is appropriate
Create two schedules for your SQL server; create one schedule to back up once weekly using Complete backup mode, and create a second schedule to back up daily using Log backup mode
- If multiple backups are performed throughout the day, a nightly or every other day Complete backup is recommended
Barracuda Backup provides the following Microsoft SQL recovery options:
- Restore a database to any available SQL server with the same or greater version of Microsoft SQL installed
- A database can be renamed and restored to a specific alternate path
- With VDI, any database can be restored to a flat file, .bak and .trn, and recovered using SQL Management Studio
- With VSS, any database can be restore to a file system, .mdf and .ldf, and attached using SQL Management Studio
- Point-in-time restores can be done on any database using Full Recovery Model and backed up using Microsoft VDI
When restoring an SQL Differential or Transaction Log backup:
- All previous backups in the backup chain are restored sequentially
- When restoring a transaction backup, all required transaction backups are automatically restored along with the corresponding Full backup
It is unnecessary to perform multiple restores to get back to a certain backup revision