February 4, 2013 at 8:19 am
Hello,
Right now we have a 2 SQL data warehouses running on a VM server and we are currently relying only on nightly VM server snapshots as a backup strategy. I would feel safer having SQL backups as well, but I am being told that it has been repeatedly tested and we never had a problem (and I can confirm that, I've seen production restored into test with no problems). Both databases run in Simple recovery mode. The nightly snapshots are being copied to tape as well. We are aware that we could loose a day or two of data, but then, worest case scenario, both databases can be re-created also from the mainframe, which hosts the OLTP database.
So I guess I shouldn't worry about it? Any thoughts? Thank you!
February 4, 2013 at 8:49 am
If you are sure SQL Server recovers from the VM snapshot, and it should if it's a good, transactionally consistent method of making the snapshot, then you should be fine.
What I'd be sure of is starting a long transaction just before the VM snapshot and then restoring the snapshot and seeing what happens. My guess is that things will roll back, but I'm not sure.I'd make sure I was aware of how things behave.
I'd also test this regularly, like monthly, to be sure that it works and my database and app always recover.
February 4, 2013 at 8:53 am
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956893/en-us
Virtualization Snapshots for Hyper-V or for any virtualization vendor are not supported to use with SQL Server in a virtual machine. It is possible that you may not encounter any problems when using snapshots and SQL Server, but Microsoft will not provide technical support to SQL Server customers for a virtual machine that was restored from a snapshot.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
February 4, 2013 at 8:55 am
Thank you!
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