How to get a snapshot of a SQL server?

[ScotH]

One of the selling points of VMWare was the ability to quickly revert to a prior VM snapshot.  Because the VMWare snapshot is not supported by Microsoft for SQL servers (it doesn't use VSS), I cannot use this great feature.  I am hoping a new set of eyes will view this discussion.  Fast snapshots for a SQL server - what are others doing to get snapshots of SQL? 

This is important because on a test server I could revert to a snapshot after a failed upgrade, and we were back online in less than 5 minutes.  If the snapshot will create a problem with SQL, I can't use it. 

[JohnADCO]

While not technically supported it does work, well we still use SQL2000 and it works anyways.    I usually do the snapshot with the SQL server VM power off though.  I think it has more issues with snaps in the hyper-v environment or something.

Now, I must admit, that most of our snapshot redundancy happens at the san level these days.   I have not done a Vmware snapshot in a looong time now.

[ScotH]

I am now discovering the SAN snapshot options such as SnapManager by NetApp.  What do you use?

[JohnADCO]

We use low end iSCSI right now...   Dell MD3000i's......

For our mission critical SQL servers,   we take a few snaps throughout the day, the last one of the day gets a full disk copy made from it to another enclosure for enclosure protection.

This is all changing, as we recently signed a major deal with Reldata to virtualize all our existing storage into a private storage cloud.  The Reldata storage servers will handle all snaps and redundancy from now on even those located on our MD3000i's.

[ScotH]

I have found this article that suggests VMWare snapshots DO support application consistent quiescing in some circumstances.  Here is the quote and the link to the full article:

"Windows 2008 virtual machines created on ESX/ESXi 4.0 hosts can be enabled for application consistent quiescing on ESX/ESXi 4.1 hosts by enabling the disk UUID attribute."

http://vknowledge.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/application-consistent-quiescing-and-vdr/#comment-182

[DSTAVERT]

That KB reference is for a specific situation. It isn't necessary unless it reflects your circumstances. Here is a link to documentation related to Enterprise applications like Exchange, SQL. http://www.vmware.com/technical-resources/enterprise-applications/index.html

[projekttasse]

Hi,

try http://www.drivesnapshot.de

It is working like a charme, also you can implement this on a bartpe live cd, which you can use to restore quicky from a network share.

Or if the sql server is on a second virtual partition, make a snapshot, of this, and you can link the image, just to copy the contents from the image.

projekttasse

http://www.projekttasse.