Hi, Veeam supports backing up databases, but as part of protecting the wider server, in the cases of Azure SQL or AWS RDS for example, it supports protecting just the database.

I can only speculate but my reasoning is that, the database relies on configuration and potentially underlying OS applications or OS config, if you lose all of that by only doing a DB Backup, you’ve made your recovery effort harder. Microsoft already support a DB only backup if that’s what you need

Finally, Veeam give you DB only recovery options, so by protecting the entire OS and underlying config, you can protect from more severe issues, whilst being able to do just individual DB/table/stored procs/whatever individual DB portion you want for recovery. Including restoring a database and then rolling up the transaction logs, without having to restore the entire OS!

If they offered a DB only mode, they’d be offering a dramatically sub-par recovery experience, for no real reason

With my viewpoint out of the way, why would you like a DB only backup mode?

Many customers only want VBR to backup their database but other backup software provide that option

Historically Veeam comes from an VM/image based backup. And compared to other vendors they were able to do application aware backups without an agent installed inside the system. And believe me, no one ever looked back to an agent based backup VM/image based backups were faster, more stable and had less effort to manage.

From my point of view, I would rather backup the whole SQL server then a single database. Like Michael says this gives you much more recovery options; you can both restore the database or the whole system.

I don’t believe Veeam will implement a feature just because “others do this”, as it may be an inferior approach that leaves the recovery process more vulnerable.

If you do want to raise a feature request, it’d be on the Veeam R&D forums (https://forums.veeam.com), but they’ll want a justification to understand the reason why they should invest in the effort to develop the feature.

From my perspective though, DB only misses out on the following:

-OS Installation & Configuration (Networking, Domain configuration, event logs)

-Applications installed (potentially front end agents for background processing tasks for example)

-SQL Server configuration (SQL/Windows Auth accounts & groups and their appropriate permissions, SQL Server agent jobs/maintenance plans, Linked Server config etc)

Normally when deploying a SQL Server, I’d deploy it as recommended:

OS Disk

SQL Server data disk

SQL Server log disk

SQL Server tempdb disk

As the OS is only going to be <100GB, pre dedupe/compression techniques, it doesn’t take up much space anyway, and the tempDB disk could be excluded or the tempDB folder specifically excluded anyway.

I agree with what @MicoolPaul and @regnor said.

Dump backup that database and backup that file can be a solution.

I have to agree with this and if backing up SQL only is the option then you can set up Agent jobs within SQL to dump backups to a shared folder on your network and then back up the shared folder only.  This will provide what you are asking for since there is no native backups for SQL as mentioned.  However, having a full SQL server backup to me is priceless.

A couple of quick points while I’m here lurking:

• Veeam does provide individual database backups - just not for MSSQL (at least not quite yet). Customers happily use our RMAN and HANA plug-ins to have Veeam manage individual db backups on those platforms (technically the backups are done ‘in-database platform’ but the Veeam management of those is pretty seamless)
• Veeam does provide granular database restore for MSSQL of course (through the Veeam Explorer for SQL at no additional license cost), with a wide range of restore options including Instant DB recovery, granular transaction-level rollback, role-based recovery through Enterprise Manager and a whole bunch more. And isn’t restore why you backed the thing up in the first place?
• I understand the points on having the whole OS backed up, but there are certainly scenarios where individual, delegated db backups are advantageous. I’ve seen customers with thousands of semi-ephemeral databases on a single SQL instance and they only want to protect a handful. It’s also true on massively shared clusters where different teams are responsible for different databases and can’t be beholden to the backup admins. Sure you can do a dump-and-scrape and 2-stage recovery is really not all that bad.

I’m sure Veeam will continue to address these needs and I know we’ll be enhancing this functionality in the future.

You don't have to be equal to everybody else,

I think Veeam strategy is very straight, and the products try to cover as much as possible around the market, taking care and giving as much guaranties they can!

But, if you are looking for something specific, go for it and use other tool.

If you want to use Veeam tools, I think is the best way / option to have, a machine and DDBB backup together.

In case of failure, you can choose, not just have one piece of it.

“From my point of view”

cheers.