Type of Change

• Bug fix (non-breaking change, fixes # )
• New feature (non-breaking change, adds functionality, fixes Support Backup/Restore to Amazon S3 #9254)
• Breaking change (affects multiple commands or functionality, fixes # )
• Ran manual Pester test and has passed (Invoke-ManualPester)
• Adding code coverage to existing functionality
• Pester test is included
• If new file reference added for test, has is been added to github.com/dataplat/appveyor-lab ?
• Unit test is included
• Documentation
• Build system

Purpose

Add native S3-compatible object storage backup support to dbatools, leveraging SQL Server 2022's new BACKUP TO URL with S3 capability. This enables backing up and restoring databases directly to AWS S3, MinIO, and other S3-compatible storage providers.

Approach

After brainstorming with @potatoqualitee

Parameter Changes:

• Renamed AzureBaseUrl to StorageBaseUrl with backward-compatible alias
• Renamed AzureCredential to StorageCredential with backward-compatible alias
• Added new StorageRegion parameter for specifying AWS region

Affected Commands:

• Backup-DbaDatabase - Full S3 backup support with URL format s3://endpoint/bucket/path
• Restore-DbaDatabase - Restore from S3 URLs
• Get-DbaBackupInformation - Read backup metadata from S3 paths
• Test-DbaLastBackup - Validate S3 backups
• Test-DbaBackupInformation - S3 URL validation
• Read-DbaBackupHeader - Read headers from S3 backups
• Invoke-DbaAdvancedRestore - To support S3 paths

Validation Improvements:

• S3 backups require SQL Server 2022+ (VersionMajor >= 16)
• MaxTransferSize blocked for Azure page blobs but allowed for S3 (5MB-20MB range)
• MaxTransferSize for S3 requires CompressBackup to be enabled
• BlockSize blocked for Azure page blobs but allowed for S3

Integration Tests:

• New GitHub Actions workflow (integration-tests-s3.yml) using a MinIO container that creates an S3-like bucket
• SQL Server 2022 container with TLS certificate configuration for SQLPAL trust store
• Comprehensive Pester tests covering backup, restore, and validation scenarios

Commands to test

# Create S3 credential (AWS S3 or MinIO)
$s3Params = @{
    SqlInstance    = "sql2022"
    Name           = "s3://mybucket.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/backups"
    Identity       = "S3 Access Key"
    SecurePassword = (ConvertTo-SecureString "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE:wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY" -AsPlainText -Force)
}
New-DbaCredential @s3Params

# Backup to S3
$splatBackup = @{
    SqlInstance       = "sql2022"
    Database          = "MyDatabase"
    Type              = "Full"
    StorageBaseUrl    = "s3://mybucket.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/backups/sql2022/MyDatabase"
    StorageCredential = "s3://mybucket.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/backups"
    CompressBackup    = $true
}
Backup-DbaDatabase @splatBackup

# Restore database from S3 backup
$splatRestore = @{
    SqlInstance               = "sql2022"
    DatabaseName              = "MyDatabase_Restored"
    StorageCredential         = "s3://mybucket.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/backups"
    MaintenanceSolutionBackup = $true
    ReplaceDbNameInFile       = $true
}
Get-DbaDbBackupHistory -SqlInstance "sql2022" -Database "MyDatabase" -Last | Restore-DbaDatabase @splatRestore

Learning

• SQL Server backup to URL for S3-compatible object storage
• S3 backup troubleshooting
• SQL Server on Linux requires certificates in /var/opt/mssql/security/ca-certificates for SQLPAL trust store (not standard OS CA store)
• S3 credential format: IDENTITY = 'S3 Access Key', SECRET = 'AccessKeyID:SecretKeyID'

NOTE

As I had to implement this on a client, I also ran tests in a DEV environment with real AWS EC2 instances and S3 buckets.