Environment overview

You can configure Data Protection for SQL Server to work in a stand-alone environment on your local computer or you can configure it to work in an IBM Storage® Protect server environment.

Data Protection for SQL Server environments

• Stand-alone

  In a stand-alone environment, you can configure your Data Protection for SQL Server to back up your SQL server instances locally without the need for an IBM Storage Protect server. You can back up your data by using VSS snapshots.

• IBM Storage Protect server

  In an IBM Storage Protect server environment, you can configure your Data Protection for SQL Server to back up your data to an instance of IBM Storage Protect server. With this configuration, you can create both snapshot or legacy backups.

SQL Server environments

For both Data Protection for SQL Server configurations, you can back up a stand-alone SQL server instance or SQL server instances that are configured in a failover cluster environment. Data Protection for SQL Server protects availability databases in an AlwaysOn Availability Group (AAG) or in AlwaysOn Failover cluster instances to provide high availability and disaster recovery at the SQL server database level and SQL server instance level. An AAG can contain a set of primary databases and multiple copies of the set of primary databases, called secondary databases. Databases in an availability group are called availability databases, and they fail over together as a group. For more information, see Configuring Data Protection for SQL Server with IBM Storage Protect in a clustered environment.