Preparing for SQL Server application protection

Before you start protecting SQL Server applications, you must prepare your environment for application data protection. Preparing your environment for SQL Server application data protection includes the following tasks:

Task	Instructions
Get familiar with your data protection environment specifics.	Getting familiar with your data protection environment specifics
Enable R‑Cloud to access applications that you want to protect.	Enabling access to application data

Getting familiar with your data protection environment specifics

When setting up your environment for data protection, you must get familiar with all the prerequisites, limitations, considerations, and/or recommendations that are specific to protecting SQL Server applications.

Prerequisites

For restoring an SQL Server database to a point in time: The database must be online and must be set to the full or bulk-logged recovery model during the backup.
For using a separate disk volume as backup storage for SQL Server temporary files: Make sure that a dedicated disk of a sufficient size is allocated. The volume must be able to store temporary files that are generated between two backups of your SQL Server database.

Limitations

Protecting application data is supported for SQL Server applications on Windows instances.
Protecting SQL Server failover cluster and SQL Server Always On Availability Group application instances is not supported.
The tempdb SQL Server system database is excluded from all backups.
A point-in-time restore of the master, model, msdb, or tempdb SQL Server system database is not possible.
Backing up a database that is set to single-user mode is not possible if it is already in use.
For Azure: Protecting SQL Server applications on Windows instances that have storage spaces configured is not supported.

Consideration

Backing up multiple application instances of the same application type running on an instance is supported.

Recommendation

It is recommended to use a dedicated disk of a sufficient size for storing temporary files generated during a backup. Otherwise, this data will be stored on the largest disk, which may affect the restore performance.

Enabling access to application data

After you assign credentials to instances as described in Enabling access to data, the process of application discovery starts automatically. When the application discovery task completes, the discovered applications are listed in the Applications panel.

Each discovered application has one of the following statuses:

Discovery status	Description
	R‑Cloud can access discovered applications that you want to protect with instance credentials. However, if your applications require database-level authentication, you must make sure to provide also application-specific credentials before you can start protecting your data. In this case, follow the procedure described in this topic. Otherwise, you can continue with protecting application data as described in Backing up SQL Server applications.
	The instance credentials do not have proper permissions and R‑Cloud cannot access applications. To enable R‑Cloud to access the applications, reassign credentials to instances so that they have proper permissions. For instructions on how to assign credentials to an instance, see Enabling access to data. After the discovery status of your application is , make sure to provide also application-specific credentials if your application requires database-level authentication. In this case, follow the procedure described in this topic.

Discovery status

Description

R‑Cloud can access discovered applications that you want to protect with instance credentials. However, if your applications require database-level authentication, you must make sure to provide also application-specific credentials before you can start protecting your data. In this case, follow the procedure described in this topic. Otherwise, you can continue with protecting application data as described in Backing up SQL Server applications.

The instance credentials do not have proper permissions and R‑Cloud cannot access applications. To enable R‑Cloud to access the applications, reassign credentials to instances so that they have proper permissions. For instructions on how to assign credentials to an instance, see Enabling access to data.

After the discovery status of your application is , make sure to provide also application-specific credentials if your application requires database-level authentication. In this case, follow the procedure described in this topic.

Procedure

In the Applications panel, select the applications that you want to protect.
Click Configuration.
On the Credentials tab, depending on the credentials that you want to use, do one of the following:
- If you want to use the application-specific credentials, do the following:
  1. Disable the Use OS Credentials switch.
  2. Enter the credentials for a user account with required permissions and access to the applications.
    
     Important The specified account must have the sysadmin role on the SQL Server application instance. The SQL Server account that connects by using SQL Server Authentication is not supported.
- If you want to use the instance operating system credentials, enable the Use OS Credentials switch.
Click Save.

You can continue with protecting application data as described in Backing up SQL Server applications.

You can later unassign the credentials from an instance or delete the instance credentials that you do not need anymore. For details, see Enabling access to data. Keep in mind that you can do this only if the discovered applications running on the instance do not have assigned policies or available restore points. Therefore, before unassigning or deleting credentials, make sure to unassign policies or mark restore points as expired.