November 20, 2014 at 10:24 am
I recently assumed the DBA role on our team. Currently, all our servers are running both native backups to disk and Commvault SQL agent backups (to another disk) for all backup jobs (commvault then backs up from our disks to tape).
In addition, Commvault is also doing filesystem backups of our NAS (which is replicating to an offsite NAS). We are also using native SharePoint backups for our SP 2013 deployment.
As you can see, we have backups coming out of our ears--which I suppose may be better than not backing up enough or at all.
We have been able to restore from both Commvault and Natively (and native SharePoint)--which I think is due in large part to CommVault detecting that a native has been done (i.e. on Tlogs) and automatically running (converting to) a full DB backup.
Adding to this, is the fact that we are keeping these backup files on disk for up to 12 weeks.
We have storage issues, our backup times to tape via commvault is faily lengthy. One of the projects I have is to clean up and streamline our backups.
I must admit that I personally like the redundancy in using both Commvault and Native--we have had an occasion or two where the job from one failed but the other did not--so our data was still backed up. However, our current approach is a convoluted.
I have done some research and it appears many DBA's prefer to run native backups to disk and have a 3rd party tool to back up the disk. That said, a lot of what I have found is >4 years ago and dealing with SQL 2005.
I'd like some thoughts and suggestions from experienced DBA's how they have approached their backup strategy and retention policy (we have no legal requirements for retention of our data--so it is pretty much up to us and our comfort level). In particular, I'd like to continue to use both commvault agent and native if we can streamline it AND not set ourselves up for issues. Ultimately, though, I'd like to follow best practices as much as possible.
Thanks
November 21, 2014 at 8:17 am
First off, I will say that the method used for backups isn't as important as whether said method can satisfy your businesses RPO and RTO. You should test each restore method to see if the RPO/RTO is attainable.
I have done some research and it appears many DBA's prefer to run native backups to disk and have a 3rd party tool to back up the disk.
This is probably due to the fact that DBA have full control over the native tools and can create and manage a backup and restore strategy that will satisfy business requirements. If a DBA does not have management capabilities over third party backup tools then they do not have control over what is arguably the most important DBA responsibility. I currently run native backups and third party tool(veeam or arcserve) backup the native backupfile to tape. This does not mean that I am opposed to using third party tools exclusively but currently do not have management ability over them.
I am not familiar with commvault but did a quick search and it looks like it is application aware and thus has the ability to do tlog backups. You mentioned
CommVault detecting that a native has been done (i.e. on Tlogs) and automatically running (converting to) a full DB backup
. I would think that since commvault did not take a tlog backup you would not be able to do a point-in-time restore, but i am not sure. And if both commvault and native tlog backups are occurring then you will have big trouble doing point-in-time as you will need to apply the tlog backups in the correct order they were taken (might mean restore tlog from native, then from commvault).
since you have no legal data retention requirement, the amount of backups to keep should be decided upon by business needs. If business is ok with recovery of only the previous day then you don't really have to keep more than one days backups.
The main thing to take away is the find out what the business wants/expects and use what ever tools and strategy will help you achieve it. Whatever you choose, You, as the DBA, have to be able to achieve RPO/RTO.
November 25, 2014 at 1:53 pm
My apologies for the delay. I was out of the office and got caught up yesterday on an issue. I appreciate the time you took in replying.
While I am not the primary, I, more or less, have control over commvault. In my shop, the SQL servers are managed by the same team as the rest of our servers.
There isn't currently anything formal with respect to RTO. It is almost always ASAP. Nothing formal for RPO either. This will be something I will be working on as part of this cleanup.
I am still on the fence about what direction to go.
I am inclined to go native with commvault backing up the filesystem. My reasoning is that I do not need to rely on a third part tool and another server to restore as I would if we used commvault exclusively.
That said, I need to learn more about any advantages the commvault SQL agent provides over native.
Thanks again
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