Acronis with SQL databases

[kmsam]

Hi folks,

Just bought me some copies of TI enterprise server and workstation. I have this SQL database for a production system that is updated on a nearly real-time basis. At the moment we back up with a SQL database dump every 6 hrs. I want to use Acronis to bring this to under 1 hr.

I want to device a strategy that uses incremental backups and wraps up the incremental hourly chages at the end of the day to give me another full backup.

Question is how does Acronis TI work with SQL databases? I saw a bit of this in the FAQ doc but it dnt say much. Should I be imaging the MSSQL folder, the whole volume with SQL folders or make SQL dumps and image those.

Anyone with a quick solution where this scenario has worked

Cheers!!!

[kmsam]

Hallo, anyone out there?

[Acronis Support]

Hello kmsam,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

We recommend creating an image of the entire system hard drive or image of the system partition along with any other partitions which hold your database files\fodlers.

As it is mentioned in this Acronis True Image 9.1 Enterprise Server FAQ Article, if you are using a VSS compatible database, you can create an image of the corresponding disks\partitions without any additional precautions.

Otherwise, you should temporarily suspend the corresponding processes in order to preserve the application-level consistency. Please see Section 6.3.4 of the Acronis True Image 9.1 Enterprise Server User's Guide for further details.

As for creating a backup every N hours, I'm afraid that the current version of Acronis True Image allows scheduling a tasks for at minimum daily backup creation. If you want to create backups every N hours, we recommend scheduling several tasks for the daily backup creation at different time. For example, one task creates a backup at 9:00 AM when the workday is started, the other one creates a backup at 2 PM when a launch time comes and a third task creates a backup at 8 PM when a workday is finished.

You can find the detailed instructions on how to use Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation and Acronis True Image 9.1 Enterprise Server in their respective User's Guides.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

[kmsam]

Thanks a lot for the response. I only need to point out that I am using Acronis TI Ent. Server, not drive backup but I reckon all other details remain the same.