Ransomware attackers specifically target and attempt to destroy backup systems to increase the probability of payment. Hardening your system is critical. Please ensure you have reviewed your platform security using the Security Hardening Checklist
Cohesity

COHESITY Documentation

Explore our documentation to get started, discover products & new features, access troubleshooting guides, register sources, platforms support.

Products
Data Security Alliance
Visit Cohesity.com
Demos
Support
Blogs
Developers
Partner Portals
Cohesity Community
© 2026 Cohesity, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Terms of Use|
Privacy Policy|
Legal|
  1. Home
  3. NetBackup™ for Microsoft SQL Server Administrator's Guide
  5. About NetBackup for SQL Server
  7. NetBackup for SQL Server features
NetBackup™ for Microsoft SQL Server Administrator's Guide

NetBackup for SQL Server features

Table: NetBackup for SQL Server features

Feature

Description

NetBackup integration

Full integration with the NetBackup primary server and media manager. Job monitoring from the primary server.

Integration with NetBackup role-based access control (RBAC)

The NetBackup web UI provides RBAC roles to control which NetBackup users can manage SQL Server operations in NetBackup. The user does not need to be a NetBackup administrator to manage SQL Server operations. However, the user still must be a member of the Windows administrator group and have the SQL Server "sysadmin" role.

SQL Server Intelligent Policy and protection plans

The following benefits are included:

  • Intelligent groups that automatically discover instance databases. (Intelligent groups are only available with policies.)

  • Use an intelligent policy or single protection plan to protect the following: Multiple SQL Server instances, instance databases, availability groups, or availability databases. Instances can be spread over multiple clients.

  • Include a full, differential, and transaction log backup in the same protection plan or policy.

  • Schedule frequent backups of transaction logs.

  • You are not required to know SQL Server commands or to write and use batch files. Instead, this feature automatically generates the batch files at run-time.

Management of SQL Server assets

NetBackup automatically discovers SQL Server instances and availability groups in the environment. You can also perform manual discovery.

After instances are registered, the SQL Server workload administrator can protect the SQL Server assets with a policy or a protection plan.

Credential rules and intelligent groups let you automatically register and protect instances and databases.

Authentication and credentials

SQL Server protection plans and SQL Server Intelligent Policy support the following:

  • Windows authentication

  • Windows Active Directory authentication

  • With the proper configuration, you do not have to run the NetBackup service account as a privileged SQL Server user on the client.

  • The user can use credential rules to automatically register instances.

Backup and restore features

The following features are available for backups and restores with the NetBackup web UI:

  • Backups are managed entirely by the NetBackup server from a central location. Administrators can schedule automatic, unattended backups for instances on local or remote hosts across the network.

  • The web UI provides recovery points from which you can easily perform various recovery operations. If instant access is configured, you can also create an instant access database from a recovery point.

  • NetBackup supports the backup of databases, files, filegroups, transaction logs.

  • Backup schedules for full, differential, or transaction log backups.

  • Manual backups and copy-only backups.

  • Backups of only read-write filegroups. This feature is available with policy-based backups.

  • Support for high availability (HA) environments, including SQL Server clusters and availability groups.

  • Browse backups and select the ones to restore.

  • Restore SQL Server objects to different locations (redirected restores).

  • Ability to use multiple stripes during a backup.

  • Configure tuning options that can improve the performance of backups.

Stream-based backups and restores

Stream-based backup and restore of SQL Server objects with SQL Server's high-speed virtual device interface.

Snapshot backups and instant access databases

NetBackup can perform backups of SQL Server with snapshot methodology. Backups with policies also offer off-host backups, Instant Recovery, and backups with a hardware provider.

You can also create an instant access database from a NetBackup backup image. The database is available almost instantaneously, achieving a near-zero recovery time objective. NetBackup mounts the database's snapshot directly on the backup storage device and treats the snapshot as a normal database.

Support for the VMware backups that protect SQL Server

VMware protection plans and VMware intelligent policies offer support for application-consistent, full backups of VMware computers using snapshots. The VMware intelligent policy also supports Replication Director (RD) snapshots.

Use of NetBackup Accelerator can increase the speed of backups.

NetBackup encryption

(Backups with policies) When encryption is enabled, NetBackup encrypts the backup for the instances or the clients that are listed in the policy.

Batch file-based SQL Server policies

Support for the backup policies that use batch files and a list of clients.

Additional restore options with the NetBackup MS SQL Client interface

The NetBackup MS SQL Client interface supports some additional restore operations that are not available in the web UI. These operations include filegroup restores, the restore of read-write and read-only filegroups, database file restores, and page-level restores.

Feedback

Was this page helpful?
Previous

Overview of NetBackup for SQL Server

Next

Installation

Feedback

Was this page helpful?