Adding SQL Server Hosts to Clumio

Before you add SQL server hosts, make sure you have met the prerequisites. For more information, see Getting Started with Clumio for Microsoft SQL on EC2.

After you connect your AWS account to Clumio, you can add SQL servers. For detailed instructions on how to connect your AWS account to Clumio, see Connect an AWS Environment.

1. From the Clumio AWS Environment page, click Add Hosts.
2. From the list of instances, select SQL hosts.
3. Execute CloudShell command for IAM permissions. This configures the SSM permissions for the IAM role (see this article for details) and adds the Vendor : Clumio tag to the EC2 instance. If your EC2 instance already has the default IAM role with SSM permissions, you can skip this step.
   Note: You can select the ‘I have successfully run the AWS CloudShell script above’ checkbox to proceed to the next step, even if you have not actually done so.
4. As installation progresses, Clumio shows IAM permissions, SSM installation, and MSSQL permissions verified.
5. An executable file path appears. Click Install executables.
6. When the installation is complete, the SQL server status shows that it is Connected.

Best Practices and Recommendations

• Make sure that the Clumio executables file path is allowed on any antivirus or security software installed on the SQL EC2 instance.
• If the SQL Host has multiple SQL server instances and one of them is offline, the host status on the AWS Environments > [Account] > MS SQL on EC2 > Hosts page will display as “Partially Connected”.
• While removing/offboarding a host from Clumio, we recommend that the binaries installed on the Host be manually removed.

Clumio for Always on Availability Groups on EC2

Clumio for Always on Availability Groups on EC2 follows the standard installation steps for adding hosts (all relevant replicas of an Availability Group) to Clumio by installing the executables, as described above.

After the hosts are added and inventory is populated, all the Availability Group details are displayed under the AWS Environments > [Account] > Availability Groups tab.

We recommend that backup policies are applied at the Availability Group level. When creating a backup policy, use the advanced settings to configure which replica the backups should run from. See the online help available from the Clumio interface details about creating backup policy.

Seeding/First backup of the databases always happens from the Primary replica regardless of the Availability Group referred Replica setting here. If needed, a backup window can be configured to ensure full database backups (seeding/incremental) occur between non-business hours.

Clumio for SQL Server FCI on EC2

Clumio supports backup and recovery of SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) deployments on EC2.

FCI Requirements

All nodes of an FCI must be added to Clumio to perform successful backups.

Adding FCI hosts

If the hosts that you import are part of a Failover Cluster Instance (FCI), this is detected when the inventory sync runs. For a successful backup of an MS SQL database on an EC2 instance that is part of an FCI, the active and passive nodes of that cluster must be added to the Clumio platform.

Clumio can identify whether the imported host is an active node or a passive node. Click the Failover clusters tab to view imported clusters. The Hosts column indicates if the host is an active or passive node. The Protection status column indicates if the cluster is protected or not.

• If the imported host is a passive node, it cannot be protected. If you hover the status, a message telling you to import the active host appears.
• If the imported host is the active node, but the passive nodes have not been imported, Clumio only provides partial protection. If you hover over the status, a message telling you to import the passive host appears.
• If you import all nodes of the FCI, Clumio provides complete protection for assets on those hosts.

Limitations

• Clumio does not support deployments that implement Availability Groups on Failover Cluster Instances (FCI).
• Clumio does not support Availability Groups and FCI deployments that span across different environments.
• FCI databases are restored as standalone instances.
• If an FCI node fails over to a passive node during the upload stage of a backup, the backup task fails.
• If an FCI deployment is changed to an Availability Group deployment, or vice versa, any Clumio protection policies applied to the original deployment will have to be manually reapplied to the new deployment.
• FileStream-enabled databases are not supported.