Feature request: MSSQL Backup Plugin

sistemas

Hello, this is a a much needed feature and for sure many will flock to Bacularis once they found that they can backup their databases with it.

Thanks in advance!

gani

Hello @sistemas

Thank you for your feature request. Yes, this is interesting idea.

We will consider this request and if we decide anything about it, we will let you know here.

Thanks!

Best regards,
Marcin Haba (gani)

sistemas

For context — this feature alone could easily be monetized, offering both free and paid support tiers with additional features.
We all know developers have bills to pay, and that’s totally fair.

Thanks!

gani

Hello @sistemas,

Thanks for sharing your idea. This is kind.

Best regards,
Marcin Haba (gani)

gani

Hello @sistemas

I am glad to let you know that this feature request has been approved.

https://bacularis.app/news/141/36/Bacularis-Project-Report-29-October-2025

Thank you.

Best regards,
Marcin Haba (gani)

sistemas

gani Thank you so much.

This is honestly the best news of the year for my project!
I just wish I could convince the board to donate some funds to support this amazing initiative — I’ll definitely ask and keep insisting!

This isn’t just cool or useful — it’s pure gold.

For anyone still relying on Windows Scheduled Tasks and small batch scripts for MSSQL backups, this project is a complete game changer: a beautiful, polished GUI and an open-source solution that offers so much more.

Thanks again, Gani — you’re the man! 🙌

gani

Hello @sistemas

On behalf of the entire Bacularis Team, thank you. It’s really great to hear such positive feedback.

This is the true strength of the Community: everyone can contribute to the project and help shape it together. That’s the “magic” that gives Bacularis its good spirit.

This will be our first plugin that supports a Microsoft product. It’s not an easy task, but we’ll see how it goes.

Best regards,
Marcin Haba (gani)

sistemas

@gani i am all willing to be a beta tester on this and try even an earlier alpha, beta plugin, if it is possible!

gani

Hello @sistemas,

Thank you for your offer. This is very kind and helpful 👍️

Of course, it is possible but it can be not easy because this plugin will be supported from version 5.9.0 that has not been released yet. If you have an test environment where you can checkout latest Bacularis code from GitHub, this can make tests easier (ex. installation with Composer). If it is production environment, I would propose to wait until the release.

I will back here once the plugin will be ready for tests and we will see how it could be done. So, let's see soon 🙂

Thanks!

Best regards,
Marcin Haba (gani)

sistemas

I have a dev_test environment for Bacularis, and I’ll try to download the code from GitHub and get it configured somehow. Just give me a few days — the seasonal flu got the better of me.
For now, I can only contribute to the project with translations. I’ve already downloaded the .po files; could you send me more details in DM about how to contribute translations?

gani

Hello @sistemas,

Thanks for your message. Yes, flu is not easy :-/ I wish you speedy recovery.

Don't worry about trying the plugin. It is already stable. You will be able to check it in your dev test when you will be healtly. The release goes idependently on that. Any additional changes can come in minor release after.

For translations, thank you for your offer. Yes, of course, you can contribute to translations. This is warmly welcome. Could you tell me to which destination language you would like to translate? Currently we have a part of translations in one place and a part in another. It causes that the procedure is slightly different for each of them. This requires a bit unifying (I don't have idea for that yet), but for now I can provide you procedure once I know the destination language.

Best regards,
Marcin Haba (gani)

gani

Hello @sistemas,

I am glad to let you know that today we released Bacularis 5.9.0 that provides the MS SQL Server plugin.

Have a good trying it when you will be heatly.

Thanks in advance for your feedback. And for now, I wish you a lot of heatlh.

Best regards,
Marcin Haba (gani)

sistemas

Wow, what an awesome way of starting the day!
@gani You brought Christmas forward with this release, amazing news!
Thank you, more than grateful for this!

Will start tommorow with the implementation and testing of the new shiny plugin on my dev-bacularis machine.
Will keep you updated with the results, logs and errors.

Best regards,

sistemas

@gani, how can I contact you outside the forum? For laying out some details for the translations. Dm me
Thanks

gani

Hello @sistemas,

Thanks for your message. Very nice to hear 🙂

Yes, please share with us your feedback for using this plugin.

For the translations, at the moment I sent you e-mail.

Best regards,
Marcin Haba (gani)

sistemas

Hello Gani,

Long time no reply, sorry about that. Life just happens sometimes.

I am now back on track testing the plugin and wanted to clarify a few things before I start creating jobs and configuring everything properly.

I currently have several Windows hosts, each one running multiple databases, plus a 3-node MSSQL database cluster.

From what I understand, I need to install the Bacula client on each host and ensure proper connectivity between every host and the Bacula server before proceeding, right? I have already done this on almost all systems and I am getting green checks when testing the connections.

My main question is about the 3-node MSSQL cluster. Do I really need to install the Bacula client on all three nodes, or would installing it on a single node be enough, considering that I will be backing up the same database exposed through the cluster’s logical architecture?

I just want to make sure I am approaching the cluster setup correctly before moving forward.

Best regards.

gani

Hello @sistemas,

sistemas Long time no reply, sorry about that. Life just happens sometimes.

Sure. Welcome back.

sistemas From what I understand, I need to install the Bacula client on each host and ensure proper connectivity between every host and the Bacula server before proceeding, right?

Bacularis MSSQL plugin backs up the Windows hosts remotely using Bacula Linux client with Bacularis. This is because we do not provide Bacularis for Windows systems.

If your MSSQL Server is on Linux host, then you can use Bacula client from the same Linux host, but for Windows hosts this is done remotely with using Tools for Microsoft SQL Server on Linux (mssql-tools). This means that on Windows hosts the MSSQL Server instances need to listen on network interface be available from outside the host in local network.

sistemas Do I really need to install the Bacula client on all three nodes, or would installing it on a single node be enough, considering that I will be backing up the same database exposed through the cluster’s logical architecture?

For the 3-node MSSQL cluster, partially I have already answered - there is no need to install Bacula client on any of the Windows hosts because they are backed up from Linux host anyway.

For the backed up databases, if they are the same on all cluster nodes, I think you can just back up them once, not three times.

Here you can find the video guide that shows how to prepare everything for backup and restore:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aLduSG5BJw

If you have not visited the MSSQL plugin documentation chapter yet, you can find it here:

https://bacularis.app/doc/plugins/database/microsoft-sql-server-backup-plugin.html

Good luck.

Best regards,
Marcin Haba (gani)