Sql Server Backup to UNC

Question

I\'ve create a maintenance plan on my SQL Server 2005 server. The backup should be written to another server. I\'m using a UNC path for this. The user running the SQL Agent jobs

Answer 1

If you are running the SQL Server And/Or SQL Server Agent Service as 'LocalSystem' but are resistant to change the SQL Server and SQL Server Agent accounts to Domain Accounts, try this:

1. If you are using a SQL Server Agent Proxy account/credentials to execute part of a task and backup using SQL Agent, on the UNC backup destination under the share and NTFS permissions, grant Full/Modify permissions (respectively) as they do get used at one point during the process of establishing connections or at least in the SQL backup jobs I've tried (at least according to the Security Logs). Unfortunately, there either isn't a way or I haven't found a way to perform certain SQL Server Service tasks by using Proxy Accounts that you can do with a purely SQL Agent task (as noted in earlier posts by User55852 and ZaDDaZ).

2. On the UNC backup destination server under the share and NTFS permissions, grant Full/Modify permissions (respectively) to the Computer account of the SQL server (source server).

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This does work for those cases where the SQL Services run as 'LocalSystem', but need to reach into another server to drop a backup.

And of course, best practices state that for each SQL Service, they should have their own domain account with least privilage, which instead of adding the Computer account of the server which exposes much more access to the share than should be allowed - essentially anything executing as the Computer account or 'LocalSystem'.