NetApp Backup and Recovery adds Microsoft SQL Server support

NetApp^® Backup and Recovery now supports Microsoft SQL Server. This significant enhancement delivers powerful, scalable, and efficient data protection solutions to safeguard your critical SQL Server databases and provide application-consistent backup in the face of any outage. This update also makes the capabilities of NetApp SnapCenter^® software, which is well-known for its application-consistent data protection and is used by thousands of customers, available as a service.

Traditionally, backup and recovery operations are complex, demanding, and costly. They often require substantial investments in hardware, such as backup servers and media gateways, as well as additional software licenses. Management of these operations demands specialized staff to maintain compliance and to mitigate the risks associated with system failures, operational errors, and ransomware attacks. NetApp Backup and Recovery helps you meet these challenges by delivering a simple, secure, and cost-effective integrated data protection service.

Backup and Recovery also offers unparalleled support for NetApp ONTAP^® based data files. With the newly added support for Microsoft SQL Server, Backup and Recovery extends its robust data protection to one of the most widely used database systems in the world.

Key features

With this launch, NetApp Backup and Recovery delivers a comprehensive array of features that help streamline and enhance your organization’s data protection strategy, including:

• Seamless integration with Microsoft SQL Server. With the new support for Microsoft SQL Server, your organization can automate application-consistent backup processes so that your SQL Server databases are backed up reliably with minimal manual intervention. This enhancement also enables rapid restoration of your databases, minimizing downtime and maintaining business continuity.
• SnapCenter backup-as-a-service option. SnapCenter users who have been requesting backup as a service now have it in the latest Backup and Recovery release. Your team no longer has to manage and to support SnapCenter software, streamlining the backup process and reducing your administrative overhead.
• Comprehensive backup strategy. The service supports a 3-2-1 backup strategy, enabling your organization to maintain primary and secondary NetApp Snapshot^™ copies while also archiving backups to object stores such as AWS, Azure, and NetApp StorageGRID^® storage. This multilayered approach helps you meet your long-term retention and compliance needs, which is particularly crucial if your business must comply with stringent data protection regulations.
• Flexible backup architectures. Backup and Recovery supports multiple backup architectures, including ONTAP to ONTAP, ONTAP to object store, and a hybrid fan-out model. You can choose the architecture that best suits your requirements, providing flexibility and scalability to help your organization adapt to different business needs.
• Advanced scheduling and retention options. Your team can define detailed backup schedules and retention policies that are tailored to your organization’s specific needs. The platform supports hourly and daily Snapshots, with granular options to lock Snapshots for enhanced security against ransomware attacks. With this detailed scheduling, your business can effortlessly achieve its recovery point objectives (RPOs) and required retention periods.
• Transaction log backup. Backup and Recovery enables the capture and backup of transaction logs at regular intervals, significantly improving your RPOs. This feature provides your organization with frequent backups to achieve minimal data loss and faster recovery times if a failure does occur.
• Efficient data management. NetApp’s block-level, incremental-forever technology preserves storage efficiencies, significantly reducing the amount of your data that needs to be replicated and stored. This approach optimizes your bandwidth consumption, minimizes performance impact on your production, and helps meet SLAs for your demanding workloads.
• Industry-leading security. The data copies that Backup and Recovery creates are independent and immutable, protected by NetApp SnapLock^® technology. Backups are locked and monitored, with alerts raised for any attempts to corrupt your data. And with end-to-end encryption that uses AES-256-bit encryption for data at rest and TLS/HTTPS encryption for data in flight, your organization attains industry-leading levels of security.
• Streamlined recovery. Your team can restore a complete database or choose time-based restore for point-in-time recovery from primary/secondary storage or object store. With Backup and Recovery Service, your organization pays only for what you choose to protect to secondary storage, making it extremely cost-effective.
• Integrated data protection. Backup and Recovery is built into ONTAP systems, eliminating the need for additional hardware, software licenses, and media gateways. This integration simplifies your backup operations, making them more cost-effective and less complex. 

The addition of Microsoft SQL Server support to Backup and Recovery underscores NetApp’s commitment to providing comprehensive, low-cost data protection solutions. Backup and Recovery empowers your organization with greater resilience, simplified data protection planning, deployment, and management—all of which help keep your critical data safeguarded and your business operations uninterrupted.

To explore how NetApp Backup and Recovery can elevate your organization’s data protection strategy, visit the Backup and Recovery page.