Backup & recovery

How to use the WITH MOVE when you don’t know the logical database file names.

When doing a database restore and you want to move the physical database files from one disk to another, or from one folder to another you need to know the logical file names.  But if you can’t restore the database how do you get these logical file names?  By using the RESTORE FILELISTONLY...

SQL Backup Compression and Backup Dedup are mortal enemies

If you have a modern tape backup solution you probably have some sort of dedup process in your backup environment.  What these deduplication processes do normally is look at the data which is being written to the backup platform and remove duplicate values in order to save space on the tape backup...

If you aren’t doing backups, you aren’t doing your job.

Apparently people still haven't figured out that taking backups of SQL Server databases is actually a requirement of having a SQL Server database.  There was a conversation recently on Twitter about yet another forum question where the OP talked about the crashed database that they had without any...

If you are going to provide SQL Server support, you should probably know what you are doing.

So the other day I got a ticket opened by my companies Managed Service Provider.  There was a backup failure on one of our databases.  The response from the hosting provider was:

This failed due to a "Error: 3041, Severity: 16, State: 1." error. This is because you...
			

Taking backups is good, but testing them is better.

I bet that if asked when the last time the database backup was taken and if it succeeded you would know off of the top of your head when that was.  But if I asked you when the last time your database was restored successfully would you know?

If you want to keep the data, back it up; even if it’s your cell phone!

Another major data loss is showing that if you want to keep your data, its up to you to back it up.  T-Mobile customers who have a sidekick phone are being told this weekend that they...

Learn to use the COPY_ONLY flag for one off backups

Taking a full backup when doing major database upgrades is a great idea.  However if you are taking differential backups this one off full backup will break the differential backup chain.

Clean up the backup history

Something that most people don't release needs a little TLC in SQL Server is the backup history. Every time a database is backed up records are written about it.  Over time this can add up to a lot of useless data floating around the SQL Server in the msdb database. If you like to use the UI...

Developing a SQL Server Database Backup Plan

Last week I published a new article on Enterprise IT Planet called "Developing a SQL Server Database Backup Plan" in which I go...

Mirroring isn’t a backup solution

In case you live under a rock and haven't heard about Journalspace.com's little mistake, they have gone out of business due to a database problem.  Here's a