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Backups for SQL Server

The backup plan that you select for SQL Server manages scheduled backups. You can also perform on-demand backups of a SQL instance or a SQL database.

You can perform the following backups:

  • Differential backups

  • Full backups

  • Transaction log backups

Note

Database log files are not deduplicated, even if a backup plan used to back up log files specifies deduplication.

Supported Backups

The SQL Server Agent supports backup of the following components:

Component

What Is Backed Up

SQL Server system databases

Databases such as master, msdb and model

SQL Server user databases

Data files:

  • Transaction logs such as log records and log marks

  • Replication settings

  • CDC changes

SQL Archiving Server Store for Lync Server

SQL Server file stream databases

File streams

File table databases

SQL Analysis Services databases

Source data, aggregations, or metadata.

Full-text indexes

For SQL Server 2005, traditional and IntelliSnap backups

For SQL Server 2008, traditional, IntelliSnap and VSS-enabled backups

Backup Considerations

  • The SQL Server agent supports streaming backups of SQL databases hosted on SMB shares.

  • The SQL Server agent supports streaming backups of SQL databases hosted on Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV). The agent supports the CSV file system for SQL Server 2012 and later applications that are supported by Microsoft on CSV.

  • The SQL Server agent supports backups on the file systems that are supported by Microsoft (EXT4 and XFS file systems on Linux and NTFS and ReFS file systems on Windows).

  • To back up databases, the SQL instance collation and the SQL system databases collation must match.

  • In a farm configuration, SQL databases with Unicode names should be backed up using other SQL backup tools since the SQL Server Agent supports only the standard alphanumeric characters. The SQL Server Agent does not support databases with extended ASCII or UNICODE characters in their names.

  • If TDE or Always Encrypted is enabled, then the following rules apply:

    • Backups are not affected.

    • If you have a storage policy that uses deduplication, then the deduplication ratio is low or non-existent.

    • If the restore destination is a different client or instance, then the SQL administrator must back up the encryption key, and present it to the destination instance.

Unsupported Backups

  • The SQL Server Agent does not support VSS-enabled backups of full-text indexes (FTI) for SQL Server 2005. Instead, use the Windows File System Agent to back up the full-text indexes.

  • The tempdb database is not backed up because it is recreated by the SQL Server every time the server is started.

  • The SQL Server Agent does not support VSS-enabled backups of SQL Analysis Services.

  • The SQL Server Agent does not support VSS-enabled backups of SQL databases hosted on SMB shares.

Conversion of Transaction Log Backups to Full Backups

Transaction log backups may be converted to full backups, for various reasons. If a transaction log backup is converted to a full backup, the backup is handled as follows.

The backup operation allows transaction log backups to continue running even though a subset of the databases being backed up requires a full backup. Instead of continuing the transaction log backups for databases that have been converted from a transaction log backup to a full backup, a new differential backup job is started and proceeds with the backup. The full backup which was required for databases that were marked for conversion from a transaction log backup to a full backup are performed as part of the new differential backup job.

For information about the reasons why a transaction log backup is converted to a full backup, see Automatic Conversion of Non-Full Backups into Full Backups.

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