Why do I need agent for App & DB in the given case, Please share views

[wajeeh_r]

Dear All,

I have BE 2012 on Windows 2008 R2 server 64 bit. This BE server I'm also using to backup one of our accounts server. The account server is running SQL 2008 R2 64 bit and have two drives C:\ and D:\, The support company who deployed the SQL 2008 and MS dynamics on this account server have scheduled the backup job for two required databases in SQL management studio for a Full Backup daily at 9:00pm and put it to D:\ drive of the same computer. I hope it is clear till here.

Now, I have installed agent for windows on this account server and using BE media server I created backup job which collects the file with '.bak' extension in partition D of server and put it on Tape. I verified with the support company if this file restored and given to them back this is enough for them for restore procedure and they said, it is ok with them.

My question is now in this case why do I need agent for ' App & DB' because all documentation of symantec BE states that we need to have agent for 'App and DB' for any applications like Exchange, Sharepoint, SQL server to support GRT, how about above case ? If support company who setup that SQL and dynamics are saying that file from D:\ partition is enough for them, are they unaware of GRT or what ?

I need to understand this.

Kind Regards,

[pkh]

With your current setup, you are doing a 2-stage backup and recovery of your SQL databases. You backup your SQL databases and then backup the backups with BE. If you have an Agent for application and databases license then you can backup your SQL databases directly using BE. To recover your databases, you can also restore them using BE The people who setup this scheme is probably trying to save you some money, but it is not the most efficient way of doing things

[wajeeh_r]

Yes, I understand that, it involves two stages first backup running using SQL management studio and then I am collecting it using BE.

actually the the two DB which we are backing up are really small in size and doing two step is not creating any burden to our environment at present.

So, just to be clear for my understanding that this way backup is also fine, I posted here. How ever I understand your point, that doing single step backup using agent for 'App & DB' will also give me ability of restoring directly from BE.

How about GRT in this case when using 'App and DB' this is like if I'm using a front end application which access our SQL DB in background and now using this Front End application a user deleted some entries by mistake, which in turn deleted record from SQL DB, then that deleted item can be recovered using 'App and DB agent' directly from BE ? OR for case of SQL the only choice is to recover the complete DB even if I use agent of 'App & DB'

Thanks,

[pkh]

You cannot restore a transaction. The smallest thing that you can restore is a database and this is a Microsoft limitation and not BE. If you have an Agent for Application and Databases license and your SQL databases are in a VM, you can do a GRT restore of a SQL database without restoring the entire VM

[Colin_Weaver]

Juts for info, as well as the virtualized GRT capability to restore a single SQL database, GRT also applies to multiple SQL Databases in one SQL instance

Also for the OP, bak files are created on  database by database basis which measn they kind of do GRT as well it is juts two stage versus single stage or both backups and restores (as pkh has said)

[wajeeh_r]

Hello Phk,

I understand for the limitation of microsoft for not able to restore single transaction and minimum is database only.

Yes, our SQL databases are in a VM from there we are having its backup in two stages as explained earlier to you above. So, also in this case I can simply restore the Database by first restoring it to a VM drive :D\ using BE 2012 and from there using SQL management studio to SQL, please correct me if I understood wrong. This also will not require to restore the entire VM.

[teiva-boy]

Many many companies do database dumps to a *.bak file. Even fortune 100 companies do it for multi-TB databases out of Oracle. What youre doing is fine!!! Or course its fine because there is a documented recovery procedure... If your process is working and tested, keep doing what youre doing.

[pkh · Accepted solution]

Yes. You can just restore the .bak files and then use them to restore the SQL databases. You don't have to restore the entire VM

[wajeeh_r]

Dear Teiva-boy,

Thanks for your response, I am clear now that doing ok in our environment.

Regards,