- This topic has 5 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 9 years, 3 months ago by
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Steven,
Maybe I'm not quite reading your question correctly, but the SQL Server databases are a core, fundamental part of the BizTalk setup. Without them BizTalk would not run; if you were to lose the databases you simply would not have a BizTalk environment.
Furthermore, you need to run the BizTalk backup jobs and not just 'normal' SQL Server backup/maintenance jobs because of the need to add transaction log marks across all of the affected databases. The 'Backup BizTalk Server' job performs this task for you (but it does need to be configured!). More information can be found at: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms962212.aspx
In our BizTalk environment, we perform fully daily backups and hourly transaction log backups and keep the files on-site for two days. Anything older is archived to tape and stored off-site.
Hope that helps?
Nick.
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Hello Nick.
Thanks for your response. The example and link that you provided were a great help.
I was just trying to figure out that if I were not to be backingup the Biztalk databases and they became corrupt, what would the cost be. For example, would I just need to re-install biztalk\configure and re-apply my application. What additional information would be lost?
Thanks, Steven
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Steven,
I can see where you're coming from and asked the same questions when I was starting with BizTalk. I think the crucial question here is 'how long will a message take to go end-to-end'.
In our BizTalk B2B environment, messages will go from receive to send in under half a second. Furthermore, we take an archive of all messages before the go through BizTalk, so if we lost the databases/database server we won't be losing 'much' – we would need to re-create the environment (and I'd much rather do that from backups than have to re-deploy all of the various artifacts) and then re-submit any messages that were lost. We budget on about a day to restore the production environment (and about an hour to get BizTalk back up and running on a secondary, standby SQL Server).
However, if you have a long running business process that requires input from several systems/users and/or correlation and those transactions were lost, those business processes would need to be recovered from a backup. Period.
So, depending on the length of the business process and the time required to restore the environment (read artifacts) you may or may not need backups. However, I think it is just makes good business sense to have backups and to test them on a monthly basis – I'd hate to be the one to have to tell my boss 'erm…. we don't have any BizTalk backups'….
Nick.
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Nick, once again, thanks alot for all of your time and advise. You provided me with an amazing answer.
Thanks so much.
Steven
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