NetBackup™ Web UI Microsoft SQL Server Administrator's Guide

You can protect an availability group environment in the following ways:

• With a protection plan that protects the preferred or the primary replica.

• If an availability group crosses multiple NetBackup domains, you can use Auto Image Replication (A.I.R.) to replicate the backup to the other NetBackup domains.

  See Protect a SQL Server availability group that crosses NetBackup domains.

Note the following before you configure the protection plan:

• NetBackup can only fully protect the availability group environment if each replica on which backups occur is registered with credentials.

• NetBackup runs a backup job on each replica in the availability group. On the replicas which are not the backup source, the job skips the backup.

Note the following limitations for backups of availability groups:

• NetBackup does not support the following types of backups for availability databases:

  • Backups of filegroups or files

  • VMware backups

  • A grouped snapshot backup

  • Backups of non-readable secondary replicas

    NetBackup can only back up databases in a replica when you allow user connections for the replica.

    If a secondary replica is the preferred replica and it is non-readable, the backup fails. If a secondary replica is not the preferred replica, NetBackup skips the backup of that replica.

SQL Server does not support the following types of backups on a secondary replica:

• Full backups

  If a full backup takes place on a secondary replica, NetBackup converts the full backup to a copy-only backup.

• Differential backups

  Backups of this type result in a failed backup.

• Copy-only transaction log backups

  Backups of this type result in a failed backup.