Exclude SQL databases from VM backups

@Lani Sinapi so, to be clear you want the DB protection to be done via the agent and have the DBs automatically being excluded from the VSA backup? Excluding the database files from the VSA backup is possible, but this can't be done automatically. You'll have to make sure the DB files are on a separate disks and via tag based filters you can exclude these disks from the VSA backup. If you want/need to exclude the appaware backup then this can be done via a key https://documentation.commvault.com/additionalsetting/details?name=%22SkipInstallAndConfigApplications%22&id=6715

Thank you very much this should help out greatly. Much appreciated!

Hello, thanks so much for the info I really appreciate it. This will be great help!

What if we don't have application aware backups; we are protecting some SQL clusters and SQL servers; at the moment we do DB backups via an agent and do test recoveries to a test DB server; however in case of an issue with the server at OS layer what if we wanting to restore a VM without having to do it all from scratch (deploy vm from a template; name it similar to existing SQL server; install SQL agent and connect it to commserve; restore databses to this newly built server); we can solve this problem by taking a vm backup however we are concerned impact it would have on a busy large SQL server; and thinking the best option would be to take a backup of the VM level excluding database drives..unless there is any other option available...

Hello ​@Rajeev Mehta 

When running a snapshot backup you choose between the following options: 

 

• Perform an application-aware backup for virtual machines that run applications. For more information, see Application Aware Backups.

• Quiesce the file system and applications, using VMware Tools on guest virtual machines to pause activity while a hardware snapshot is created.

• Perform a crash consistent backup.
  https://documentation.commvault.com/v11/commcell-console/application_aware_quiesced_and_crash_consistent_backups.html

In your case i would recommend using the Crash Consistent backup and then also using the SQL agent to protect the SQL data. Doing this will allow you to recover the VM in full when needed but assume any SQL data collected here wont be usable and instead you will rely on SQL agent to perform that side of recovery. 

This is assuming you are using the SQL Agent and not doing SQL dumps and using the windows agent. If you are using the windows agent to collect dump files, i know its hard for DBA’s to change but i would recommend using the SQL agent instead. 


Kind regards
Albert Williams
 

If you isolate your database files to a dedicated disk you can exclude that specific disk while creating VM backups. It would be great if Commvault would introduce a more intelligent methodology.