May 21, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (5/17/2012)
Lowell (5/15/2012)
MysteryJimbo (5/15/2012)
IMHO if its not restored on SQL Server, it hasnt been tested. If a restore fails, no manager in any company will accept the excuse "well it worked in Red Gate". You'd be shown the door.If your company can't or wont pay for a fully specced server (or provide an alternative) they need to understand the implications
I mostly agree; you have to be sure backups work. We are on the same page on that, I think, although i didn't emphasis it as well as you did.
With that said, even though i'm not a spokesman for redgate or anything along those lines, I have a lot of confidence in that product. I've never seen or heard of a situation where a backup that was open-able via Virtual Restore was not also restoreable via a standard restore. a combination of actual restores to spot check the virtuals would probably be best.
Being a spokesman for Red Gate ;), Virtual Restore does a full restore. It tricks the server into thinking it's reading from an MDF with a filter driver, but it does have to read the entire backup and do a restore, just like a normal restore. The only difference is the bits aren't copied.
If it works in Virtual Restore, it works in the normal restore process.
A fully spec'd server isn't needed. You just need a box that restores things and has disk space. While you might need a test box, and can do this, an old workstation with drives works.
With 30 servers, if you can restore all your dbs every day, good for you. If you can't, put them on a schedule. Try to restore 10 every third day (so 30 in 3 days). It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. The copy time, restore time, etc. can be problematic.
Note that you want this scripted and automated. You should have it running and have another process that checks the restores and pings you if anything fails. Nothing worse than getting an email every day on status of positive restores that you start to ignore.
Steve, quick question. How many licenses would I need for this software to use it in the capacity we are talking about?
May 21, 2012 at 1:20 pm
30. Backup is licensed by the server.
For the Virtual Restore side, if you wanted to run this on one server, one license.
Red Gate Sales do negotiate, so if you're interested, ping sales@red-gate.com and try to work a deal.
July 3, 2012 at 2:49 pm
I just finished setting up a server that does exactly what you need. In fact, here is what I setup:
1.) A single core VM with a single drive the same size as my largest db.
2.) Custom SQL script that creates a blank db and restores any backup onto it, regardless of partioning or NDM volumes.
3.) Custom SQL script that runs DBCC against each database after every restore and stores the results in a table.
4.) Data-driven SSRS report subscription to notify DBAs in the event of a restore failure or DBCC issue.
This handles our 20 enterprise servers each day, taking about 13 hours to restore and check each and every database.
Contact me directly if you would like a copy of my code.
July 3, 2012 at 3:04 pm
tim.cloud (7/3/2012)
I just finished setting up a server that does exactly what you need. In fact, here is what I setup:1.) A single core VM with a single drive the same size as my largest db.
2.) Custom SQL script that creates a blank db and restores any backup onto it, regardless of partioning or NDM volumes.
3.) Custom SQL script that runs DBCC against each database after every restore and stores the results in a table.
4.) Data-driven SSRS report subscription to notify DBAs in the event of a restore failure or DBCC issue.
This handles our 20 enterprise servers each day, taking about 13 hours to restore and check each and every database.
Contact me directly if you would like a copy of my code.
really glad to hear an update on this, thanks Tim!
Lowell
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