Our SQL VMs in Azure are currently being backed up via Azure backups on a daily basis. We have noticed however that this is affecting our differential backup chains - how do we create a regular server snapshot backup image of the SQL server without affecting the SQL database backup chains on it?
2
votes
1 Answers
1
votes
The Azure Backup service uses VSS snapshot backups, which means it's going to quiesce SQL Server. The good news is that you get good backups (as opposed to crash-consistent ones), but of course the bad news is that they're not copy-only backups.
What you're probably looking for is crash-consistent backups (dirty snapshots) - search for "crash" on that Azure Backup documentation link. To get that in Azure, you'd need to lose the Azure VM agent, which comes with different drawbacks. (On-premises, this is easier since you can just tell your hypervisor to grab a dirty snapshot backup without engaging VSS.)
