MS SQL Backup

It is not possible to exclude certain tables or files from a backup selection.

Requirements

To backup the MS SQL data source from Cove Data Protection's Backup Manager, the following requirements must be met:

  • The minimum backup unit for MS SQL backups is a single database
  • The Backup Manager must be installed on the same MS SQL server that you want to back up
  • There must be sufficient free space in the VSS Shadow Copy storage area for the selected size of the backup data

    This is because MS SQL backups depend on VSS snapshots. When a backup session is completed, snapshots are automatically deleted, so this space will be freed up after the backup session completes.

Recovery model

We highly recommend setting the database to use the simple recovery model before starting backups. Under this model, inactive virtual log files are automatically removed after each checkpoint (or shortly after it).

This saves space and helps avoid unnecessary processing.

To access the model selection and change it:

  1. Log on to the MS SQL server
  2. Start the SQL Server Management Studio
  3. In the Object Explorer, right-click the database and then select Properties from the context menu that opens
  4. In the Recovery model list, select Simple
  5. Save and close

The simple recovery model makes it possible to restore a database only to the end of the most recent backup. We recommend scheduling backups frequently enough to prevent the loss of recent changes

If you choose to back up a database under the full recovery model, you are responsible for truncating the logs

MS SQL Server Configuration

If the Azure AD Connect feature is enabled on the MS SQL Server, we recommend running a test backup. If the test backup session fails with a VSS error, this may be due to an Azure AD Connect upgrade released in October 2017.

You can resolve the issue by changing the "Log On" account for the SQL Server VSS Writer service from "Local System account" to a domain administrator account. To learn more about possible solutions, see the A COM+ application may stop working on Windows Server 2008 when a user logs off Microsoft help article.

Recovery

Instructions on restoring data from this data source can be found on Recovering data in Backup Manager.

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