Backing up to an NFS share

steffan · November 8, 2006 12:57PM

I have an NFS share off a Snap Server NAS that I am using Server2003 NFS services to mount as a local drive. I'd like to send a Mirrored copy of the nightly backup to that drive.

I can't browse to any mapped drives and looking through the forums, it seems it's not supported unless you use UNC. Problem is that NFS does not use standard UNC paths. The syntax looks more like this:

10.100.1.55:/BackupShare/

How can I get this to work?
Thanks
-steffan

petey · November 9, 2006 12:48AM

What would the syntax be like if you were to create a regular backup to the NFS share? E.g.

BACKUP DATABASE model TO DISK = ' ? '

Thanks.

steffan · November 9, 2006 2:38AM

As far as I can tell, you can't do it natively. That's why I hoped this product would be able to send to a mapped drive and let the local OS deal with how the mapping is handled. Or perhaps find a work around via this forum.

Know of any plans for SQLbackup to support mapped drives?

petey · November 9, 2006 3:02AM

So if using regular SQL Server backups, something like this would work?

BACKUP DATABASE model TO DISK = '10.100.1.55:\BackupShare\model.bak'

steffan · November 9, 2006 3:15AM

No, it does not. Guess that's what I meant when I said you "can't do it natively". I meant within SQL2000, not SQLbackup. I was looking for a way around this limitation of MS-SQL.

petey · November 9, 2006 4:16AM

Could it be because the SQL Server service account does not have access to the NAS (e.g. LocalSystem) ?

If the SQL Backup service is running using a service account that has rights to the NAS, could you run the following from Query Analyzer/SSMS and report the results:

sqlbackup '-sql "BACKUP DATABASE model TO DISK = [10.100.1.55:\BackupShare\model.bak] " '

or should that be

sqlbackup '-sql "BACKUP DATABASE model TO DISK = [\\10.100.1.55\BackupShare\model.bak] " '

Thanks.

steffan · November 10, 2006 2:15AM

No it's not that. I tested the NFS share with wide open permissions (full open access) and got the same results. It's a syntax thing within MSSQL. I think it just doesn't understand the formatting of the path. That's why future support for mapped drives within SQLbackup is so needed. If you could work around the limitation within MSSql, it would be HUGE!

No other workarounds that I'm missing within the product?

thanks
-S

petey · November 10, 2006 2:34AM

My understanding of NAS devices is that they appear like regular network shares, so you either refer to them by name e.g. \\NAS1\share or by IP address like in your case e.g. \\10.100.1.55\BackupShare. In this way, any application can support writing to the devices without requiring special drivers or customised code etc. Or is there something else?

steffan · November 10, 2006 3:22AM

This particular machine is exposed to the net so we try to keep it as locked down as possible. So, even though the NAS supports many file serving protcols, inculding native MS file shares, we don't have any of those protocols loaded on this server. It's been a topic of debate for a while. The Unix guys think we're crazy even having this MS box exposed, the newer MS guys think we're over protective. They are probably both a bit correct. But as it stands now, it's NFS only.

Backing up to an NFS share

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