Are the Native SQL Server Backup Utilities Holding You Back?
1. Are the Native SQL Server Backup
Utilities Holding You Back?
Jason Hall
Manager, Database Systems Consulting
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Agenda
• Introductions
– Speaker
– Topic
• Native Backup/Restore Limitations and Considerations
– Full vs. Diff Backups
– Backup Job Management
– Backup Reporting
– Backup Reliability
– Always On Availability Groups
– Restoring Only What You Need
– Backup Security
• Q&A Taken Throughout via GoToMeeting
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Who Are These Guys?
• Jason Hall: Manager, Database Systems Consulting
• David Gugick: Senior Product Manager, Backup and Recovery Solutions
• Started w/ LiteSpeed in 2004
• Helped customers architect backup and recovery solutions
• Frequent speakers at SSUG’s and Conferences
• Always available
– @jasonfhall or Jason_Hall2@Dell.com
– @davidgugick or David_Gugick@Dell.com
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What Are We Going to Talk About?
• Microsoft has always provided a very capable B&R solution
• Comes with limitations
• Several facts that must be considered when implementing
• Explore what those limitations and considerations are while offering
suggestions on how to work around
• Lots of demo’s!!!
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Full vs. Differential Backups
• Deduplication?
• Seems like a no brainer right?
• Differential backup challenges
– Reliance on full backup
– Effectiveness is dependent on amount of data change
– Backup retention gets much more complex
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Reliance on Full Backup
• A differential backup without its associated full is useless
• Scenarios that can affect the full backup
– File is mistakenly deleted
– File is moved to an unknown or inaccessible location
– File moved to tape and shipped offsite
– A new full backup (w/out COPY_ONLY) is taken
– File has become corrupted or unrecoverable
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Amount of Data Change
• Differential backups only make sense when a small % of data has changed
• Situations where data can change:
– Unusual application activity
– Unscheduled data loads/purges
– Database Maintenance (Index Rebuilds)
• Lots of change means large Differential backups
– You don’t save time, space, and…
– It can double (or worse) your recovery time
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File Retention
• Ensure that you are not deleting Full’s that are required for Diff/Log restores
• Full on Sunday, Diff’s Mon – Sat, Don’t delete older than 3 days
• If 2nd Full Backup fails, make sure previous full is not deleted.
– F
– D
– D
– D
– F (failed)
– D
– D (still good, just points back to first full)
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Tips & Tricks
• If you are going to incorporate Differential backups…
• For out of cycle Full backups, use COPY_ONLY
– Or ensure that new full is a part of retention policy
– BACKUP DATABASE AdventureWorks TO DISK=…. WITH COPY_ONLY
• Perform data loads/purges before scheduled Full
– Or perform out of cycle full after complete
• For large index maintenance operations, perform before scheduled Full
– Or perform out of cycle full after complete
• If verifying or testing restores, test going back to full
• Make sure retention policies are set to not delete full backups until new
successful full
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Backup Job Management
• Many ways to run scheduled database backups
– SQL Server Agent Jobs
– SQL Server Maintenance Plans
– Custom Scripted TSQL Jobs
– Windows Scheduled Tasks
– Typically only used for SQL Express
– Centralized 3rd Party Scheduler
– Enterprise Backup System
– IBM Tivoli TSM
– Symantec NetBackup
– Dell NetVault Backup
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SQL Server Agent Jobs
• Need to be managed on a per server basis
– Can be very challenging in large environments
• SQL Server Maintenance Plans cannot be easily transferred between servers
– SSIS Packages w/ hard coded connection strings
– Manually create them on each server
• TSQL Scripts can provide portability
– Might need to run differently per version of SQL Server
– Need a solution to copy/deploy
– May be complex depending on amount of custom logic required
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Example Script
DECLARE db_cursor CURSOR FOR
SELECT name
FROM master.dbo.sysdatabases
WHERE name NOT IN ('master','model','msdb','tempdb') -- exclude these databases
OPEN db_cursor
FETCH NEXT FROM db_cursor INTO @name
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
SET @fileName = @path + @name + '_' + @fileDate + '.BAK'
SET @backupstr = 'BACKUP DATABASE ' +
@name +
' TO DISK = ' + char(39) + @fileName + char(39)
EXECUTE (@backupstr)
FETCH NEXT FROM db_cursor INTO @name
END
CLOSE db_cursor
DEALLOCATE db_cursor
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Ways to Deploy
• SSMS has Group Execute
– Add the script as a job to one SQL Server
– Export Job as a TSQL Script
– Group Execute against all, or a sub group of servers
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Backup Reporting
• SQL Server stores backup statistics in a set of local MSDB tables.
• SSMS has a very inflexible report available
– Easier and more powerful to query yourself
• Backup failures are logged locally to:
– SQL Agent Job Step Logs
– SQL Server Error Logs
– Windows Event Logs
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Backup Reporting Challenges
• Backup statistics are only stored locally on the instance being backed up
• If you have 100 servers and you want to report on all of your backups, have
to run 100 reports
• SSMS Group Execute can help here
• Or you can build a reporting architecture to aggregate this data
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Example Backup Report Query
• Query msdb.dbo.backup… tables adding filtering and sorting
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Backup Reliability
• Native SQL Server backups and restores can be very “fragile”
• Any IO related issue whether network or local will cause a failure
– Only choices are:
– Do we take a backup that conflicts w/ production workload?
– Or, do we go the day without a backup and keep our fingers crossed?
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Backup Reliability Tips
• When backing up over the network:
– Make sure the network is reliable
– Stagger backups that share the same network to avoid saturation
– Look into possibly routing backups over a dedicated network infrastructure
• If you cannot backup over the network:
– Make sure you have plenty of local disk allocated
– Backup to a disk other than where your data/log files are
– Copy the backup across the network
– Consider using a more robust option than COPY
– ROBOCOPY
– Provides fault tolerance and multi threading
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AlwaysOn Availability Groups
• Against Secondary Replica’s
– Only Full (COPY_ONLY) and Log backups are supported
– No differential backups or standard full’s are allowed.
• Backup preference should be set to enforce policy or avoid license violation
• Backup preference can be enforced through a MP
– Not through BACKUP DATABASE
– Not through Backup Wizard
• Check sys.fn_hadr_backup_is_preferred_replica
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All Or Nothing Restore
• Restore types mirror backup types
– Full
– Diff (Full + Diff)
– Log (Full + Log(s))
– Filegroup (Full + Log)
• What if you only need a subset of data (i.e. Table, Stored Proc, Record, etc...)?
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Recovery Tips
• Restore to separate server and grab what you need
– Requires time and space
• Proactive Solutions
– AlwaysOn?
– No
– Log Shipping Load Delay
– Database Snapshots
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Backup Security
• Native SQL Server backups are created in plaintext
• Can be read by any hexeditor (even notepad)
• Used to be able to password protect backups (no longer available in 2012)
• Compression can make it harder to read, but still possible
• TDE Encrypts whole database (including backup)
– Has many implications
• Consider if and how backup data should be secured/encrypted
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How Can Third Party Solutions Help
• Backup Templates and Enterprise Reporting
• Object Level Recovery
• Up to AES 256 Encryption
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Summary
• Hopefully we’ve given a lot of food for thought!!
• How can we (Dell Software) help?
– NetVault LiteSpeed for SQL Server
– http://www.quest.com/webcast/litespeed-for-sql-server-
demonstration819145.aspx
