"In recent time, some of our counterpart organizations have faced database corruption. Though our company takes backup every week, we have decided to become more careful. I would like to pose a question to the expert admins here: How often should I backup my database? Our company is a mid-sized organization and our database size is also moderate. Please suggest us some good backup policies."
The value of data for any organization is beyond description, yet, people often neglect its importance. That is why, the cost of data loss in US alone amounts more than $10 billion every year. Sometimes, data loss is not preventable; but a recent and complete back of the database can save us from losing the data for good. In order to save money, time, reputation and most importantly data itself, every company should backup their database regularly. Now the question arises regarding the frequency of database back. Many people want to know, "how often should I backup my database?" In this post, this question will be answered as we will discuss how oftem you must take backup of SQL Database.
How Often Should You Backup SQL Database?
The frequency actually depends on several things. Database size, how busy it is, the criticality of data, all play vital role to determine how often the backup to be taken. Usually the backup process is the mixture of complete backup, incremental backup (differential), and transaction log backup. There are different types of backup frequency policies that organizations can adapt according to their need.
- Weekly: According to this backup policy, complete database backup is taken every week or 168 hours. Besides, the differential backup is done every day. This type of backup is usually chosen for databases that have only a few transactions every week or contain less important data. A good example can be the payroll database of a tiny business company where very little changes are done usually and any lost data can be recreated easily.
- Daily Once: This is a simple backup policy where the complete backup is done every 24 hours without any differential backup. This policy is ideal for small companies with more transactions than the company mentioned in the earlier point. Usually, companies that issue manual receipts need this type of backup. As there are manual records, any lost data can be recreated with its help.
- Daily Four Times: This database backup policy is ideal for any particular database of a mid-sized organization or a bank. These databases go through many changes every day. For this reason, this policy supports complete database backup every 24 hours and incremental backup every 6 hours.
- Daily Six Times: This backup policy can be termed as the through backup. As per this policy, complete backup is done once every 24 hours, differential backup at every 4 hours and transaction log backup every 1 hour. This policy is for the organizations that will face disastrous consequences or interruption in business functionality if any data loss occurs. Mid-sized retailers and large enterprises usually adopt this policy.
- Daily Eight Times: This policy has been designed for the database that is busy and contains business-critical data. As this system cannot afford to lose any transaction, transaction log backup is done every 15 minutes. Besides this policy includes incremental backup every 3 hours and full backup every 24 hours. Large online retailers, commercial bank, and hospitals are the main subscribers of this policy.
Quick Way to Restore Database Backup
The aim of database backup is to restore it when necessary. Due to any bug, the database may face issue any time. In case of major database corruptions, it is often impossible to access the database. Apart from these, any natural disaster can also cause damage to the database. In such cases, recent backup can help organizations to overcome the adverse situation. Users can take the help of SQL Backup Repair tool to restore the backup. This tool is an efficient one to restore and export .bak files into SQL database. It supports 2014, 2012, 2008 and all other versions of SQL Server database. File size is not an issue for this program as it can export BAK file of any size to any SQL Server version. This application restores the backup file seamlessly and helps to resume business operation.
Conclusion
In this post, we have answered a common query: “How often should I backup my database?" From the above discussion, we have learned that the frequency of the database backup completely depends on factors like its size, importance, etc. Users can read the types of backup policy and decide which one to choose for their organization.