How to Back Up and Restore Application Consistent Snapshots of SQL and Exchange Databases

Transcription

1 How to Back Up and Restore Application Consistent Snapshots of SQL and Exchange Databases How To#: 4041 Title: How to Back Up and Restore Application Consistent Snapshots of SQL and Exchange Databases Table of Contents Overview Resolution Overview of Application Consistent Snapshots of SQL and Exchange Databases Prepare Your Environment Generate a Public/Private Key Pair Add the Public Key to the OmniCube Virtual Controller (OVC) Run the Backup Script Restore a VM Run the Restore Script Properties Server Platform: All server platforms OmniStack Software Version: v and later Information Level: 1 Date Created: Thursday, November 12, 2015 Date Revised: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 Overview This article explains how to configure and run a backup script to create application consistent backups of SQL and Exchange databases. It also explains how to restore configure the restore script file. As of OmniStack v3.5.3, VSS backups for SQL have been integrated fully into the product if a supported version of SQL is installed. Users running OmniStack v3.5.3 or later with SQL should not follow this procedure. You may continue to use this script for Exchange or older versions of OmniStack software where you are backing up SQL. Resolution Overview of Application Consistent Snapshots of SQL and Exchange Databases You run the backup script on a Windows Server Virtual Machine (VM) running an SQL or Exchange Server that can access the SQL or Exchange databases and system files that you want to back up. The script uses Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to create an application consistent snapshot of the specified SQL or Exchange files on the VM. The script then backs up the entire VM. A script for restoring backups is also provided. You can configure the restore script file, which reside on the target VM, before backing up the VM. The configured restore script file is then available after you restore a VM. 1

2 Here is a high-level list of what the scripts do: SimpliVity script runs inside the VM The script invokes Microsoft VSS to create a VSS snapshot VSS snapshot communicates with the application to complete in-coming writes and flushes memory to disk The script allows log truncation by the VSS backup Once the VSS based snapshot is created, the script invokes the SimpliVity CLI commands to create a backup When the SimpliVity backup succeeds, we delete the VSS software snapshot Restoring - Restore the VM with the SimpliVity restore process using UI or CLI Run the VSS restore script inside the restored VM The restore script restores the VSS snapshot to get back the application consistent state of the VM Exchange - Customers usually need to run ESEUTIL to recover the database SQL - Restarting the database runs the recovery process Prepare Your Environment The backup script set consists of the SimpliVityBackupV2.ps1 file. You use PuTTYgen, PuTTY, and Plink to create and apply a private key that the script uses to access the specified OmniCube Virtual Controller (OVC), without being prompted for a password each time the script runs. You can download these utilities from: On the Windows Server VM, you can save all utilities to a single folder for easy file access. For example, a folder named \BackupScript located on the Windows desktop. Generate a Public/Private Key Pair To generate a public/private key pair and save the private key as a.ppk file: 1. Double-click puttygen.exe to open PuTTYgen. 2. Click Generate to create a new ssh public/private key. 3. Move your mouse continuously to generate randomness for the key. 4. Click Save private key to save the key to a file. 5. Click Yes to confirm saving the key without a passphrase. 6. Copy the generated key text displayed under: Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file to a new text file. 7. Exit PuTTYgen. NOTE: Saving the key without a passphrase enables the script to execute without prompting for the passphrase. Add the Public Key to the OmniCube Virtual Controller (OVC) You add the public key that you created in Generate a Public/Private Key Pair to the list of authorized keys on the OVC. When you run the backup script, it passes the private key to the OVC to gain access and proceeds with the backup without prompting for a password. To add the public key to the OVC: 2

3 1. Double-click putty.exe to open PuTTY. 2. Type the management IP address of a OVC in the Host Name field. The OVC can be on any OmniCube system in the Federation. 3. Click Open. If this is the first time you are using PuTTY to connect to the specified OVC from this VM, PuTTY prompts you to add the public key to the Windows registry. Adding the key to the registry allows the backup script to run without prompting. 4. Click Yes and PuTTY adds the public key to the registry on the Window Server VM. If you click No, the public key is not added to the Windows registry and the backup script prompts the user each time the script runs. 5. Log in to the OVC as svtcli. 6. Open the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. 7. Paste the public key copied from Generate a Public/Private Key Pair at the end of the authorized_keys file. Make sure the out put pasted onto a single line (you may have to remove spaces) 8. Put ssh-rsa in front of the public key you pasted. It should look similar to the other entry in the file. 9. Save and close the authorized_keys file. 10. Exit PuTTY. 11. Open a command prompt and run the following command from the directory containing the plink.cmd file to ensure that the backup script can access the OVC: plink <virtctrllr_ip/> -i <path file="" key="" private="" to=""/> -l svtcli echo hello, world where: VirtCtrllr_IP is the IP address of the Virtual Controller path to private key file is the path to the private key file If the command is successful, hello, world appears without prompting for a password. If you are prompted for a password, you might have incorrectly copied the public key to the OVC or the login credentials for the OVC are incorrect. Run the Backup Script Make sure you have completed the following tasks to configure the backup script file and have not changed the location of any configured files: Generate a Public/Private Key Pair Add the Public Key to the Virtual Controller To run the backup script, enter the following command at a PowerShell prompt (you may need to Set-ExecutionMode Bypass): SimpliVityBackup.ps1 To display the command arguments, enter: SimpliVityBackup.ps1 -? NOTE: You can use Windows Task Scheduler to run this command on a schedule. The parameters for SimpliVityBackup.ps1 are: Mandatory parameters 3

4 MountPoints - Comma separated list of drive letters or mount points. Mount points containing spaces must be enclosed in single or double quotes. For example: MountPoints E:,F: MountPoints C:\Mount,"C:\Mount 2" MetadataFolder - Directory to which the metadata.cab file will be written. PLinkFolder - Directory where plink.exe can be found. SVAIP - IP address of the virtual controller. PrivateKeyFile - Full path to the private key file used to authenticate with the SVA. SvaUserName - The user name of the account where the key was registered. vcenterusername - The user name used to connect to the vcenter. vcenterpassword - The password for the vcenterusername. Datastore - The datastore on which the VM resides. VMName - The name of the VM. Destination - The datacenter where the backup is being sent. Retention - The length of time the backup will be retained, specified as 1d for 1 day, 1w for 1 week, etc. Optional Parameters TruncateLogs - Truncate the logs during backup, if not present logs will not be truncated. VerifySQL - If specified the backup will fail and abort if the SQL writer is not included. VerifyExchange - If specified the backup will fail and abort if the Exchange writer is not included. The backup script creates manual backups of VMs that gradually consume storage capacity as each backup is created. Older backups do not expire or get deleted automatically. To free up storage capacity, delete backups manually or run the provided Perl script CleanUpOldBackups.pl. The script deletes the oldest manual backups for the specified datastore and VM, but leaves the number of specified backups you want to keep. You run the script for each VM on which the backup script is run. NOTE: The script ignores any manual backups that have custom names. Run the following command at a command prompt on the OVC to delete older backups: CleanUpOldBackups.pl <datastore name=""> <vm name=""> <# backups to keep> <vcenter user=""> <vcenter password=""/></vcenter></vm></datastore> where: datastore name The name of a datastore containing backups to delete. vm name The name of a virtual machine that contains the backups to delete. # backups to keep The number of newer backups to keep after older backups are deleted. vcenter user The user name for the vcenter account. vcenter password The password for the vcenter account. NOTE: You can use Linux utilities, such as cron, to run the cleanup script on a schedule. The restore script (VSSRestore.txt) enables you to recover SQL files from a backed up VM as follows: Use the vsphere Client GUI or OmniCube CLI commands to restore the VM. 4

5 Use the restore script to recover the SQL or Exchange file. NOTE: If you do not want to restore a VM, create a mirror VM that you can restore and then use the restore script to recover the SQL files. Restore a VM You use your vsphere Client or the OmniCube CLI commands to restore a Windows Server VM. For more information, refer to the OmniCube help or the OmniCube CLI Reference. The SimpliVity restore reverts the entire Windows Server VM to the backup copy. You then use the restore script to recover SQL files from the restored VM. The restore script set consists of the SimpliVityRestore.ps1 file. Run the Restore Script To run the restore script: 1. Take offline all SQL or Exchange databases you plan to restore. 2. Run the following command at a PowerShell prompt to restore backups: # SimplivityRestore.ps1 To display the command arguments, enter: SimpliVityRestore.ps1 -? The parameters for SimpliVityRestore.ps1 are: Mandatory parameters MetadataFolder - The directory that contains the metadata.cab file written by the backup script. MountIndices - A comma separated list of the 1 based indices of the mount points specified in the backup script arguments. The user can specify a subset of the mount points in the shadow to support side-by-side restore scenarios. If the user specified 4 mount points and wants to restore all 4 they would do so by specifying: MountIndices 1,2,3,4 3. Wait for the restore operation to complete. The restore is complete when the script exits. 4. Bring back online all SQL or Exchange databases. 5. Review the SQL or Exchange databases to verify that all files are restored. 5