BE2010R3SP1, VMware and MS SQL

[schulti]

Hello,

I'm looking for a best practice solution:

At a customer we have different vSphere-4.1-VMs with MS SQL-(Express)-Servers installed on it. We use the VMware Agent with installed Windows Agent in every VM and SQL-Agent. The VMs are backed up weekly full and daily differential. In addition the SQL-Servers are backed up weekly full and daily differential with the SQL-Agent. After every full or differential backup of the SQL-DBs runs a backup-job for the DB-Logs.

Now I have the problem that the VMware-Jobs running fine, the full backup jobs of the SQL-DBs running fine - but the differential backups fail with the error, that the last full backup didn't run with the BE-Agent. I think there is a problem with the VMware-Jobs and the GRT-Option. I have deactivated the GRT-Options for Exchange, SQL and Active Directory, but the basic option for GRT is enabled, because the customer wants to have the possibility to recover single files and folders of the VMs.

Do I have to change the option settings or to create other jobs?

Thanks in advance!

[ZeRoC00L]

This seems to be 'normal'. Check this topic for more info:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/be2010-best-practice-virtual-ms-sql-2005-server

[Colin_Weaver]

Yep - with or without GRT we can't stop the VMware VSS request to quiesce SQL going in which looks like a backup from another application not from Backup Exec

As such whenever an AVVI backup is run on a SQL server if you also need to do remote agent backups (for whatever reason) then the first remote agent backup after the AVVI backup MUST be a full backup against the SQL instance.

 Probably best to use AVVI for a DR backup of the system once a week. And then follow that with a Remote agent full backup of your SQL database so that you can then do SQL differential or log backups as needed until the next AVVI one runs and then repeat the sequence.