If you are looking for backup and restore software to maintenance your SQL Server databases use SQLBackupAndFTP. Database backups present a really complicated theme. This article will assure that you have the info you need to get backups.
Backup and Restore Software
If you need to make schedule backups use SQLBackupAndFTP. All you need is to create a backup job, which will make all work for you. Also, you can use One-Click SQL Restore. This is the simple free tool that restores full SQL Server database backups created using T-SQL Command or SQLBackupAndFTP tool.
Recovery models offered by SQL Server.
Before creating a backup plan with the help of backup and restore software learn SQL Server recovery models. Each backup within SQL Server is impacted by the transaction log. The processes of transaction log management are operated by the database Recovery Models. There are certainly three recovery models:
- Simple. All transactions are written to the log. Just after a checkpoint, every committed transaction is always removed from the log also called truncating the log. You have to note, that no point-in-time recovery is impossible.
- Full. All transactions are created to the log. The log can only be truncated with a log backup procedure. Point-in-time recovery with this recovery model is possible.
- Bulk-logged. All transactions are written to the log other than some sort of minimally logged operations like INSERT INTO or BULK INSERT. The log can just only be truncated with a log backup operation. Point-in-time recovery is possible provided that no minimally logged operations are in any of the requisite log backups.
Use Backup and Restore Software to Create a Backup and Recovery Strategy
A frequent dilemma is how to start considering a backup plan. It is known that you shouldn’t make a backup plan, but you should make a recovery strategy that lets you restore the SQL Server database with the lowest loss. The backup strategy should permit you to meet your Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
Only Full Backup
With a strategy that just includes full backup, you’re pretty limited in what you can do with restores. Basically, you can just recover the time of each full backup. If the failure happens at 20:59 on Monday, just before the next full backup is scheduled, then all the changes since the last full backup could be lost. As a result, if data loss requires to be stopped and the data cannot be recreated, log backups are also included. Nevertheless, you create such a backup strategy with the help of backup and restore software.
Full plus Differential Backups
Assume that the log backups are usually taken each 15 minutes. In the event that all the backups are ready, this indicates that the database can be recovered to any point in time. Nevertheless, this still is quite possibly not the most useful strategy. What if a disaster occurs at 20:59 on Monday with this strategy? The first thing would be to take a tail-of-the-log backup and right after that get started restoring.
To restore the database up to the point of the failure would mean recovering last Monday’s full backup and then all log backups for the previous week. Based on how much churn there was in the database through the full week that could be an awesome amount of transaction log that will take a long stretch of time to replay. That’s clearly not a perfect restore plan, but it’s a frequent plan in the subject. If you have a strategy like this, make sure that you’ve practiced doing a restore so you understand whether you can meet your RTO in the case of a problem. Such backup strategy can be created with the help of backup and restore software
Full, Differential and Transaction Log Backups
To decrease this problem, some plans choose more regular full backups, but these might be really large to take every day, for instance. The alternative is to use differential backups, that only contain the data that has been modified since the last full backup.
With this strategy, recovering from a failure at 20:59 on Monday is a lot faster. Keep in mind that a differential backup is cumulative, so the recovery plan is the Monday full backup, the 00:00 Monday differential backup, and all the log backups from Monday. Having the differential backup from 00:00 Monday means that all the log backups earlier that can be forgotten, as the differential backup covers the same as the net result of recovering all these log backups. Create such kind backup plan with the help of backup and restore software
Summary
This had been a really quite simple and planned example, but it clearly displays the benefits of each backup type. Once you’ve planned your backup strategy, ensure that you test it to make sure that it allows you to perform your desired restores.
This is a very simple example. A user had a corrupt database and desired to recover with absolutely no data loss. They were unwilling to use their backups and tried running recovery on a duplicate of the database, but it had to delete data, forcing them into applying their backups. It turned out that they had a full backup from May plus a log backup every fifteen minutes up to July! The user thought they had a great backup strategy – full recovery model plus log backups – but their backup strategy didn’t let them do the recovery that they wanted.