SSAS Weird Science
The other day we did an install of SSAS on a server without loading the database engine. Everything went fine, the end user started accessing the service and then we started talking about how we should make certain we are taking backups of the objects that are being created. Now, how would you think to create a backup of a database in SSAS? Sure, do a right-click and select backup. OK, not a problem.
What’s that? Oh, you want to properly configure and schedule the backups, just like you do for the other database instances? Yeah, me too. Did you notice anything missing when you tried to schedule that backup using SSMS? Did you? No?
Well I sure did. In fact, I suddenly felt as if I were in a remake of The Crying Game, as I was totally not expecting the fact that there was not a SQL Agent under the covers for me to use to schedule my backups!
No sir. SSIS, SSRS, SSAS, but no SQL Agent? So, either Microsoft feels that backing up your cubes is not all that important, or that the use of the built-in Task Scheduler is good enough. Honestly, I can’t help but feel that someone dropped the ball here, I cannot imagine that someone made the decision to simply leave this service out of the final product. Would it be so hard to include the SQL Agent here? If I decide to scale out, and I build an ETL process on top of a cube and decide to use this server, how would I schedule the ETL piece anyway? Wouldn’t I want that to be as easy as a right-click somewhere? And don’t tell me to simply use an existing agent on an existing server somewhere else, because in my opinion I simply should not have to do that. Besides, if that agent goes down then I lose the backups being run on two boxes, not just one.
And yes, I know that you do not need to do backups of your analysis databases and cubes as frequently as regular database backups, but that is no excuse for not giving me the functionality of SQL Agent. I really want to call someone an Egghead here, but this doesn’t seem to have his markings. No, this is more like a Louie the Lilac type of caper, someone who sells you something that smells too good to be true.
