Plan how Commvault protects your SAP IQ data. In most environments, you can start with recommended defaults and adjust only if your environment requires it.
Start with your SAP IQ environment
Each SAP IQ configuration protects a single database instance. To protect multiple SAP IQ databases, configure one subclient per database. If you need to isolate databases by region, environment (production, test, development), or business unit, configure separate SAP IQ instances accordingly.
Align storage with your SAP IQ region
The Commvault workload runs on the SAP IQ server and writes backup data to storage. To minimize latency, avoid egress charges, and improve backup and restore performance, use backup storage in the same cloud provider and region as your SAP IQ server.
Recommended approach: use backup storage in the same cloud and region as your SAP IQ server. If you use a different region for resilience or compliance, expect higher costs and longer backup and restore times.
Understand backup behavior
SAP IQ supports both full and incremental backups. SAP IQ tracks which data blocks changed since the last full backup using native block-level change detection. Incremental backups capture only changed blocks without requiring external timestamp comparison or API queries.
Incremental restore requires the corresponding full backup to be present and applied first. Commvault enforces full-before-incremental ordering during restore operations.
Decide how to scope your data
SAP IQ backups are scoped at the database level. Each backup job protects one complete database instance (catalog, IQ store, and transaction log). To protect multiple databases, configure one subclient per database.
Organize backups logically
Use subclients to organize backups based on how your organization manages SAP IQ data. Common approaches include grouping by environment (production, test, or development), business unit or application, or data sensitivity or compliance requirements — whichever helps you apply consistent policies and simplifies monitoring and reporting.
Plan for performance
Backup and restore performance depends on database size, change rate, and region alignment. To optimize performance, align storage with your SAP IQ server region, avoid unnecessary fragmentation of protection scopes, and schedule backups to avoid peak database activity periods.
Confirm permissions early
Make sure the required SAP IQ permissions are in place before configuring protection. For details, see Configure SAP IQ (Sybase IQ) user and permissions.
Understand key limitations
Key limitations include:
- One database per backup job (configure one subclient per database for multiple databases)
- In-place restore only (cross-host restore requires manual file path adjustments)
- SAP IQ server must be running before backup starts
- Incremental restore requires the corresponding full backup
For complete details, see Protect SAP IQ (Sybase IQ) data.