A couple months back, I changed jobs...

My new employer uses (and has been using) CommVault for several years to handle all the backups, and here's what I've seen / discovered / realized:

1. Commvault does support and can do "native" SQL backups. When such a backup is running, the actual SQL Query text is "backup database [whatever] etc, etc"

2. It's either not possible, or a PITA to do a "ad-hoc" backup in CommVault. Refreshing my QA environment I just take a copy-only full backup in SSMS, it's less trouble.

3. Restores from Commvault aren't too bad, although the wording in the message boxes can lead you to think it's not going to work like you expect because you haven't had the chance to specify the restore location yet so it looks like it's going to restore into Production and did you maybe miss an option? Nope, you select what to restore, then hit OK, THEN you can specify the where (another server?,) name (yes, you can rename the DB,) the point-in-time, and whether to leave the DB in recovery or not.

4. Commvault requires JAVA. Deal with it... 😉

All told, so far it's not as bad as I thought. It will definately be to your advantage to work with, rather than fight with, the Commvault Admin. My CV Admin and I get along, she's got some limited knowledge of SQL, and I do my best to explain *why* I want the backups done in a particular way, while still trying to also work within the limitations she has (storage, storage, storage. The employer wants even a lot of the desktops backed up nightly) The backups are kept on local media (I think a SAN array) for 30-days, then they drop to tape and are moved off-site.

So, nice part from my point of view, I can pawn off backup problems on someone else (unless it's my server causing the problems,) downside is, that someone else may not be able to resolve the issue as quickly as I would prefer. (CV here was down for almost a week because of a problem with the CV library. Admin worked on it for 16-20hrs at a time with CV support before getting it fixed. Not a fun week, worrying that I'd need a restore of recent data, with no backups. Even more annoying, myself and the Oracle admin thought we had fixed an on-going Oracle backup issue to CV, and couldn't test until the library problem in CV was fixed...)

So, similar to what Jeff suggested in option 3, rather than fighting the storage team, work with them. Even more, get on the CV Admins good side, explain that you would like at least enough access to CV to be able to add / remove DBs to the backup clients as needed, run restores of your DBs, etc, without having to ask / wait for the CV Admin / Storage team.

So far, that's working for me.

Jason