About SQL Server agent grouped snapshots
Note:
This feature is only available with SQL Server intelligent policies and batch file-based policies. It is not available with protection plans.
Grouped snapshots quiesce a group of databases together and snapshot them at the same time to back them up as a group. NetBackup automatically discovers and groups the databases, up to specified group size. The constituent files of all databases are backed up to a single storage image under the same backup ID. This means that an "import and copy" procedure would use only one image to export all of the database backups in the group.
Certain requirements must be met for a grouped snapshot to be performed. If any of the following requirements are not met, a standard backup is performed:
All backup operations must be full backups. Differential backups and transaction log backups are not supported.
(Batch-file based policies) The same policy must be specified for each backup operation in the group.
(Batch-file based policies) The same NetBackup server must be specified for each backup operation in the group.
The group size is limited to 64. NetBackup automatically creates additional snapshots if there are more than 64 databases in an instance.