In February, I started a monthly contest at www.bradmcgehee.com to help spur some sharing of best practices among DBAs. The February Question of the Month was:
What is one of your best practices for making full backups and transactions log backups of your production databases?
I want to thank everyone who participated. There were no wrong answers, only responses that described different ways that DBAs backup their databases and transaction logs.
As I read through the responses, there was one fairly consistent theme, and that was the importance of checking backups after they are made to ensure that they can be restored. I was glad to hear this, as this is a best practice that I share with anyone who will listen.
The hard part is selecting the best answer for the question. As I read through the responses, the responses from these DBAs particularly caught my eye:
- Shawn Johnson
- Bryan Smith
- Peter
- Alankar Chakravorty
- Leo Silva
This is not to say that the other responses were bad, because they weren’t. These responses caught my eye because these DBAs made an extra effort to offer more detailed information.
After careful consideration, I have selected the post by Shawn Johnson as the winner of the February Question of the Month. Shawn has won a US $50 gift certificate from Amazon.com, and a single license to SQL Backup Pro, from Red Gate Software. To see his response (along with all the other responses) to the February Question of the Month, click here.
Can you learn anything from my winner selection that you can apply to future contests? Hopefully yes. The more detailed your response, the greater your chances of winning. If you haven’t done so already, check out the March Question of the Month, and add your response as soon as you can.
