Backup Testing

• John Reid-322103

  Say Hey Kid

  Points: 704

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  June 11, 2007 at 5:16 am

  #711950

  A restore is an integral part of a backup, and should be regarded that way.  You don't know whether you actually have a backup (or a blank tape!) until you have done a succsessful restore.

  Should you do a test restore everday?  Absolutely!  Should it induce pain?  Not necessarily; if your database is less than 4GB in size, consider doing your test restores to a SQL Server Express instance on a spare PC, or if anyone in your organisation creates or runs reports, perhaps a dedicated reporting server would be the way to go, to which you restore your production database backup on a daily basis, thus taking the workload off the production server while at the same testing your restores.

• Swapnil S. Bagul (India)

  SSC Enthusiast

  Points: 196

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  June 13, 2007 at 10:10 pm

  #712818

  Production databases! i reccommend a daily restore from the tape media to a standby server. Maybe the server is not to a prodution capacity. But i agree to john, "You don't know whether you actually have a backup (or a blank tape!) until you have done a succsessful restore.". Hence, this is not a waste, it not only makes you confident of restore during emrgency but also creates a day old database for reporting queries. Not only restore, but also a checkDB to ensure optimum integrity.