Back in summer 2021 Nutanix NDB, formerly known as Era, version 2.2 was released which you can read about here.
One of the features introduced was the concept of MS SQL Server database groups which mean you can group multiple databases running in the same database instance as one Time Machine entity. This applies to both single DB Server VM setups, standalone database, as well as to Availability Group databases.
Normally each new MSSQL database get its own Time Machine as per below figure so you can manage them as separate entities and apply different SLAs (retention policies)
This is usually a good approach but when you have many databases running in same setup with the same recover point objective (RPO) requirements the management becomes easier and faster if you can manage these databases as a group. One SLA to select which applies to all databases in the same database group.
During provisioning you have an option to select either “One Database with One Time Machine” or “Group Database with One Time Machine”
If you select to group the database with one time machine the Databases view in the UI will give you the Database group logical construct.
When accessing, clicking, the DG_mssql08 object you’ll directed to the view “SQL Server Database Group Summary” .
From here you can add additional databases by clicking the Add button in provide the required input.
When done it’ll appear in the UI in the Databases widget, in my case i added two new databases so i have a total of three databases in the database group.
Within the DB Server VM, after the first DB was added, i can see that 5 new disks were added so even though the Database Group concept is used each database gets its own set of disks.
This is how it looks via the UI Databases view.
Via the Time Machine section you can now:
- Access the DG_mssql08_TM
- Via the Actions option decide to:
- e.g. Restore one of the individual databases
- e.g. Clone one of the individual databases
- e.g. Restore one of the individual databases
Pretty handy feature….
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