I am running sql server 2012 with latest sp on win server 2012 on a physical machine.  I am thinking datto backup system to perform online image backup.  They are claiming their engine is built into the kernel and therefore is able to capture the current state of the machine.  I always understood that the right way to do backups for point-in-time recovery is through transaction log backup.  Is it safe to take an image backup and assume that once the image is restored, the machine is going to pick up where it left off?  Are there issues with using image method?

Thanks in advance

Hi

I hope you are trying to take disk image of a drive on which SQL Server is running (databases are on the drive and it has ldf, mdf, and ndf files).

It will take snapshot of Disk on that particular time.

    

The snapshot backup is image so ofcourse as you said it wont provide you PIT recovery. If there is heavy  transaction running while you took disk backup there wont be information about it. So you might always not get "Where you left it"

You need to consult that image backup documentation. If te backup sw uses supported measures, then this is supported. And it is possible to produce traditional log backup *based on such a snapshot backup*. Whether your backup software does this is a different question.