About protecting an application database with VMware backups
With a VMware backup policy and the Veritas VSS Provider, NetBackup can create consistent, full backups of an application database that resides on a virtual machine.
VMware application backups let you:
Choose whether or not to truncate logs.
Use the existing database restore process to restore and recover data from VMware backups.
From one VMware backup, choose from these restore options: Volume-level restore, file-level recovery, or database restore.
With the option, NetBackup creates a full SQL Server backup (not copy-only) that can be used as a basis for SQL Server incremental and transaction log backups. T-SQL snapshots were added with SQL Server 2022 and are strongly recommended for systems with SQL Server 2022 or later. This type of snapshot is not supported with SQL Server 2019 and earlier.
Restore and recover databases from VMware backups to alternate clients. The target destination client can be a physical computer or a virtual machine.
See the following information on virtual systems compatibility:
https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/doc/NB_70_80_VE
Cohesity recommends the Veritas VSS Provider. VMware Tools calls the provider to quiesce the VSS writers for a file-level consistent backup. Without this VSS provider (or the VMware VSS Provider), database recovery may require manual steps and granular recovery is not supported.
See Installing the Veritas VSS provider for vSphere.
The Veritas VSS Provider allows the VMware backups that truncate the logs on SQL Server virtual machines. The Veritas VSS Provider truncates the logs by means of full VSS backups. Note that the VMware VSS provider creates copy-only backups, which cannot be used as a basis to truncate logs.
For VMware backups with T-SQL snapshots, you must also disable the SQL Server VSS Writer service.
See Disable the SQL Server VSS Writer service .
Select the policy option to use NetBackup Accelerator to potentially increase the speed of full VMware backups. (This option is not available in the settings for a protection plan.) By reducing the backup time, it is easier to perform the VMware backup within the backup window. To use this feature, you must first perform an initial backup with Use Accelerator enabled. Subsequent backup times can then be significantly reduced. Accelerator support for database agents currently restricts backups to the full schedule type.
To periodically establish a new baseline of change detection on the client, create a separate policy schedule with the option enabled.
For more details on Accelerator with VMware backups, see the NetBackup for VMware Administrator's Guide.
For Accelerator to work with a VMware policy with application protection for SQL Server, a successful and complete previous backup is required to gain acceleration optimization. A backup job or child job (including the ASC) can have an incomplete status (Status 1). In that case, the backup image is not considered as a base backup for a subsequent job and acceleration optimization for that job is zero.