Be Prepared

  • Ronald Cartmale (1/5/2010)


    I could not agree more with the editorial and have always sort to ensure that my company’s data is protected by the best possible practice but when you work for a company whose only interest in backups is when the worst happens, then like in the film Heart Break Ridge you have to adapt and improvise.

    I am constantly struggling to achieve even simple model backups because of the lack of disk storage space let alone move over to more secure complex models, and due to performance issues I am limited to doing one backup per day.

    It is frightening to think that there are companies like this, but I am sure we are not alone as with everything it boils down to cost and like many many people they know they should have life, even property insurance (see some of the cases of UK flood victims) but just can’t justify the cost at the time.

    Sadly, Penny wise, pound foolish. 😉

    My wife and I used to pay renters insurance when we lived in the city. People scoffed at us until the day we were broken into. They cleaned us out, but we were able to replace most of it because of the insurance.

    I also remember having a database go corrupt, fluke thing, but we had good backups and log backups and did a point in time recovery to about a minute before the corruption occurred. We were heroes that day and just because of something incredibly fundamental and stupid easy, good, tested, backups.

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

  • Grant Fritchey (1/5/2010)


    My wife and I used to pay renters insurance when we lived in the city. People scoffed at us until the day we were broken into. They cleaned us out, but we were able to replace most of it because of the insurance.

    Lucky you.

    When I was broken into my insurance tried every trick in the book to avoid having to pay out (including claiming that the break in was my fault). After copious 'discussions' they eventually paid out less than half the insured value of the items, claiming 'depreciation of value'

    Gail Shaw
    Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
    SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

    We walk in the dark places no others will enter
    We stand on the bridge and no one may pass
  • Another thought is not backing up to the same box your db server is on 🙂

    Email I got yesterday from a frazzled IT lead ...

    We recently had a sbs2003 server running sbs2000 sql crash

    It was very bad 2 of 4 Hds failed in a raid 5

    I was able to run data recovery and get some sql backups which show correct file size

    however when I go to restore the data to our windows 2003 std/sql2005 std server I get

    backup is incorrectly formed type errors

    Regards,
    Kim(Kman)

    www.toocoolwebs.com
  • good editorial, and nice reminder, Grant.

    When I'm with Scouts, if we're out in the woods and something breaks, you need to have things to respond to that emergency. same thing with backups and your systems. You can't count on being able to run to the store to make things all better. You had better been prepared early for what might happen.

  • Steve Jones - Editor (1/6/2010)


    good editorial, and nice reminder, Grant.

    When I'm with Scouts, if we're out in the woods and something breaks, you need to have things to respond to that emergency. same thing with backups and your systems. You can't count on being able to run to the store to make things all better. You had better been prepared early for what might happen.

    Thanks Steve.

    We're getting ready for the winter survival campout next month. Should be fun.

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

  • "Why should something as routine as backup not be done automatically by computers? Why depend on people to do the backup?"

    The reason I asked this was, database corruption almost always happens. And almost always the customers have failed to take backups even after shouting at them to take backups month after month. So I KNOW that my customers are never going to take backups no matter how much I implore them, so is there any way to cut them out of the process, sort of make the computers do the backup auto magically? Sigh. I know the answer is going to be no.

  • umailedit (1/7/2010)


    "Why should something as routine as backup not be done automatically by computers? Why depend on people to do the backup?"

    The reason I asked this was, database corruption almost always happens. And almost always the customers have failed to take backups even after shouting at them to take backups month after month. So I KNOW that my customers are never going to take backups no matter how much I implore them, so is there any way to cut them out of the process, sort of make the computers do the backup auto magically? Sigh. I know the answer is going to be no.

    You can script SQL Agent jobs out and send them the script. It will create the backup job and the schedule for it. It just has to be run once and the automation will take over from there. Only issue would be file locations for the backups. It's almost doable without human intervention.

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

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