Considerations and Limitations

General

• When using SQL Server Express edition (for example, SQL Server 2012 Express included in Veeam setup) as a staging system, consider that databases that exceed 10 GB cannot be attached to this SQL Server due to Express edition limitations (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645993(v=SQL.110).aspx). If you plan to recover large databases following a scenario that requires a staging server, then it is necessary to configure a fully functional commercial version of Microsoft SQL Server as a staging system.
• Current version offers limited functionality for restore from/to SQL Server included in Microsoft SQL Server Failover Cluster. For details, see this section.
• SQL Server included in Microsoft SQL Server Failover Cluster cannot be used as a staging system.

Backup

• By default, system databases (master, model, msdb) are skipped from transaction log processing and are not a part of Veeam Explorer restore workflow. These databases can be restored using file-level restore, as described in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide. If you want to exclude other database(s) from transaction log processing workflow, please refer to this Veeam Knowledge Base article. Consider that exclusion configured this way will be treated as a global setting.
• Transaction log backup is not supported for Windows Server 2008 or earlier guests on Hyper-V 2012 R2.

• Transaction log backup requires that at least one image-level backup of SQL Server VM is performed. This particularly means that transaction log backup will not function after full SQL Server VM restore is performed, or for newly appearing databases, until first image-level VM backup is performed.
• If both Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Server are installed on one VM, and this VM is processed by a job with log backup enabled for both applications, Veeam Backup & Replication will back up only Oracle transaction logs. Microsoft SQL Server transaction logs will not be processed.
• For the truncation of database transaction logs, make sure that Deny log on locally and Deny log on through Terminal Services are turned OFF for the account used for VM guest processing (these settings can be turned on, in particular, due to group policy). See also Required Permissions.
• Currently, point-in-time restore and restore to the state before selected transaction is not supported for replica VMs and for restore points created by backup copy job.

Restore

• Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server does not support restore via PSDirect, VIX, or Sphere API.

• Table-level recovery is supported only for database tables with no external dependencies.
• If you plan to restore an encrypted database using Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server, consider information provided in this Veeam Knowledge Base article.
• If you plan to restore database schema objects, consider that 'Replace' logic is not supported - that is, if an object with the same name exists in the production database and in the backup, then a backup object will not replace the existing one, but an object with a different name will be created instead, as described in the Restoring Database Schema and Data. Also, consider that when objects are renamed, relationships between them are not renamed.

Support for AlwaysOn Availability Groups

• AlwaysOn Availability Groups are supported for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and later.
• If you want to restore a database from AlwaysOn availability group node to the state as of prior to selected transaction, all nodes of the group should be located in the same time zone.
• When using Basic Availability Groups on Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition, consider that secondary replica node cannot be backed up because the secondary node is not readable. See the following article for more information: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/alwaysonpro/2016/05/02/sql-server-2016-alwayson-availability-group-enhancements-basic-availability-group-on-standard-edition/.

• See the corresponding section of the "How To Backup and Restore SQL Server Database with Veeam" document at https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/howtosql/how2_sql_always_on.html.