I believe I’m not alone on this feeling: It seems like every time we use the Azure Portal some new feature appear. The features reproduce themselves faster than rabbits. Did you had this feeling before? Share your thoughts in the comments. This week, working with Azure, I found some new small features around and decided … Read more
There are a handful of options when backing up SQL Server databases. A DBA must understand the differences and come up with a plan that protects the organisation’s data. In this article, Pamela Mooney explains service level agreements, recovery models, and some strategies to ensure that the data can be restored quickly.… Read more
Recovery Manager (RMAN) is the preferred tool to backup and recover the Oracle Database. You can use recovery catalog or the control file of the target database for RMAN Repository, but Recovery Catalog is the preferred method as it offers several advantages over the others, like reporting operations, simple recovery in case of control file damage, and more. Generally in… Read more
There is a growing assumption that Cloud file-storage services represent an ideal way of backing up files. It seems a compelling idea because it is so easy and seems secure. The truth is, as always, more complicated. There is more to any backup strategy than just cloud storag… Read more
What happens if your database deployment goes awry? Do you restore from a backup or snapshot and lose all the data changes that have happened since then? Do you prepare rollback scripts to revert the changes whilst preserving the data? Do you branch by abstraction and toggle off the changes? Have you a blue-green deployment that can be switched? Do you quickly roll forward? … Read more
The sqliosim utility is provided with SQL Server to test the I/O stability and 'correctness' of a server. It doesn't measure performance but simulates the read, write, checkpoint, backup, sort, and read-ahead activities of a typical SQL Server instance under load. It is generally used before installing SQL Server in order to ensure that new hardware can handle your expected loads. Bob Sheldon explains.… Read more
There are plenty of occasions when it makes a lot of sense to do backup and restore scripts in PowerShell. Microsoft have put effort into making it much easier, as Allen demonstrates.… Read more
SQL Server's Query optimiser judges the best query plan from the data in the relevant tables and the server's hardware. How, then, can you investigate the query plans being generated for slow-running queries on a customer's production server when you can neither access the server, nor recreate the database from a backup?… Read more
During presentations about doing database backups and restores, there seem to be two types of questions that are commonly asked - those that come from the floor during the presentation, and those that are asked in private afterwards. These are sometimes more interesting, and challenging to answer well.… Read more
The backup and restore system in SQL Server hasn't changed a great deal over the years despite a huge growth in the typical size of databases. When disaster strikes, and an important service is taken offline while a restore is performed, there is often time to reflect on whether it might be possible to design databases for a more rapid recovery of the most critical parts of a database application.… Read more
When things go wrong, a DBA's reputation depends on an understanding of the transaction log, both what it does, and how it works. An effective response to a crisis requires rapid decisions based on understanding its role in ensuring data integrity.
This book shows you how to control your transaction log, so that it doesn't control you.… Read more
As the volume of data increases, DBAs need to plan more actively for rapid restores in the event of failure. For this, the intelligent use of filegroups is important, particularly when the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server offers the hope of online restores. How, though, should you arrange your data on the different filegroups? What happenens if the primary filegroup gets corrupted? Why backup and restore indexes?… Read more
With Amazon Web Services, you might find that a large Amazon Machine Image (AMI) as with over 1 TB, taken as a snapshot can take two days or more. If so, it is time to change your backup strategy and manage your EBS volumes as efficiently as possib… Read more
A DBA's tasks, from day-to-day, are rarely constant; with one exception: the need to ensure each and every day that any database in their charge can be restored and recovered, in the event of error of disaster. In this book, you'll discover how to perform each of these backup and restore operations using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), basic T-SQL scripts and Red Gate's SQL Backup tool.… Read more
When you need to restore but aren't 100% sure about the contents of your backup files, what do you do? Head to the headers. Grant Fritchey explains how to find the useful bits in these huge stores of information and make sure you restore the right files.… Read more
Over the next few months, we'll be asking various well-known DBAs to describe their worst disaster caused by a mistake they made. To kick off the series, we asked Phil Factor to confess. He came up with a classic: The mistaken belief that a backup WITH CHECKSUM guaranteed a good backup that could be restored, and the ensuing disaster.… Read more
A Backup system is merely part of a recovery system. If your backups can't be used to recover the database, then they're useless. Do you regularly make sure that you can restore a database from your backups? … Read more
Backups are an everyday part of DBA life, whereas restores tend to happen on call at 3 a.m. In this article, Grant Fritchey looks at what you should be doing to make your restores as quick and seamless as possible.… Read more
The loss of a company's data is often enough to put the company out of business; and yet backup errors are generally avoidable with the application of common sense rather than deep technical knowledge. Grant digs into memories of his long experience of giving forum advice, to come up with the most easily preventable backup errors.… Read more
Not everyone who is tasked with the job of ensuring that databases are backed up, and easily restorable, consider themselves to be database administrators. If you are one of these 'Accidental DBAs' then Grant Fritchey has some good straightforward advice for you to ensure that things go well when a database has to be restored from backups
… Read more
