Snapshot SQL Server

[rlivermore]

Snapshot of SQL 2008 Server fails with "cannot create a quiesced snapshot...exceeded time limit for holding off I/O" is due to the number of IO's? Is snapshoting SQL supported and is there a good solution to fast backup/restore options in case of server failure (hardware or software)?

[vmroyale]

Hello.

What VMware product are you using and which verison?

What OS is the SQL Server running on in the VM?

Do you have the VMware Tools installed in the guest OS?

Good Luck!

[rlivermore]

Running ESXi 4.1, Windows 2008 Standard R2 SP1, SQL 2008 R2 Enterprise, VMware tools is installed ver. 8.3.7 build 341836.

[orthohin]

                        

Please visit .. http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2010/04/05/sql-server-2008-introduction-to-snapshot-database-restore-from-snapshot/

Regards,
Milton

[rlivermore]

Thanks the article is interesting but I'm not really looking to snapshot the database per se as we are taking full transactional db backups twice each day, looking more for system level snapshot.

[ClaudeFR]

Hi.

Any chance that this is running on a Windows 2008 OS server? We have had issues with snapshots failing there and requiring that we make an adjustment in the VMware tools inside of the VM. The attached PDF has details on that.

I hope this helps.

Good luck.

Claude

[rlivermore]

Thanks for the help!

[1q2w3e4r]

Here's how I handle SQL backups:

1. Snapshot the whole server with VDR once at the start when it isn't being used (this gives you a starting point to recover from without any risk of data or log loss)

2. Use a SQL maintenance plan to backup the databases to another VMDK on an ongoing basis (daily or hourly or whatever).

3. Then use VDR to backup only this VMDK ongoing.

This way you never have issues with backups as you are only snapshotting static data. The only catch is that a restore will be a three step process as well, but this I can live with this for the sake of easy backups.

I currently working on a way to do this with Exchange, and I think the easiest way will be to do the same but use Windows backup to create backups to another volume, then only snnapshot that volume on an ongoing basis.