Backup and Recovery

Right now, your transaction log backups are set up to run every 15 minutes, every hour, or maybe every few hours. It’s time for a reality check. Figure out what internal customer owns the data inside the database, and walk into their office. Ask them how much data they’re comfortable losing. You’re probably going to…

There will come a time when your database backups will not be as fast as you would like them to be. Over time, the volume of data you’re storing will grow, and backups will take longer – but your weekly or daily maintenance windows don’t grow as well. Backups can be resource-intensive, using I/O and…

Who in your company is responsible for database backups? It’s Me Fantastic! Check your backup job. Did it run successfully the last time it was supposed to? Are the files where they are supposed to be? Have you checked the integrity of the backup files by restoring them to a secondary server? If you are…

March 31st is World Backup Day, and while most of the press will be focusing on backing up your priceless lolcat photos, it’s still a good time to talk with management about your database backups. Your boss will have some simple questions, and you can arm yourself with a few easy queries. Are We Backing…

Hi!  I’m your SQL Server.  I know you don’t usually listen to me, so I’ve decided to take a drastic step and find you where you spend all your time – Brent’s blog.  Seriously, you need to spend less time on the intertubes and more time on the error logs.  You’re lucky this post is…

Managing data is about managing risk, but no matter how we good we are at managing risks, they’re still risks. We’ve seen several high-profile data failures recently: Sony’s database of Playstation users and financial data was hacked Amazon’s supposedly independent cloud services went down together, and some data was lost permanently The state of Texas…