If a disaster struck tomorrow, are you ready for it? Are you sure you thought of everything? I cannot count the number of times something happened, and I thought that I should have been able to anticipate that. It can be a big benefit to get another viewpoint on your disaster plan. No matter how…
Category: Disaster Recovery
31 Days of Disaster Recovery Revisited
A few years ago, I did a blog post series dedicated to disaster recovery (backups, restores, corruption, etc). 31 blog posts dedicated to the topic (though not 31 days in a row) have been compiled into a 75 page eBook that can be downloaded from the new website SQL Server Best Practices. Reposted with permission…
SQL Server on Linux Series: Backing up over the network
One of the challenges with any SQL Server business continuity strategy is backing up your databases and logs on a frequent basis. With Windows, we’ve known how to accomplish this for years. But, with SQL Server on Linux, you can accomplish the same task with just a few different twists. It is similar to mounting…
Your Service Level Agreement is a Disaster
As a DBA, you’re in charge of keeping the systems healthy, and getting them back up and running quickly in the event of an emergency. This is perfectly right and proper, right up until you start defining a service level agreement. A Service Level Agreement (SLA) defines the level of service you agree to provide,…
Why shouldn’t I shrink my database log file?
TL;DR: It’s pretty pointless and can cause performance issues. Let’s start by asking why you might want to shrink your log. It’s too big I find that people who say this frequently don’t have a firm idea of what is too big or even why it might be as big as it is. This also…
Distinguish backup file names or pay the price!
SQL instances shouldn’t do this So far, no one has found exercise to be beneficial to servers. Purposeless repetitive motion may be good for human muscles, but your SQL Server instance experiences no gain for the pain. Here’s a good example: taking useless backups. (“Did she say useless backups? I’ve never heard
SQL maintenance is a lifecycle, not an event!
You’ve heard me talk about this many times, in so many different ways, but it’s worth repeating: SQL maintenance lifecycles are important. People who disagree, disagree because they spend too much time firefighting and don’t have time to really think about it. Don’t know anything about SQL maintenance lifecycles? Let’s
Integrity Checks are Useless*
Integrity checks have become more and more important over the years, as companies store more and more data. This data is absolutely critical, so when corruption happens, it can break a company. But in all but the smallest shops, running any kind of integrity check is all but completely useless.
What is COPY_ONLY?
You’ll frequently hear that you should add the COPY_ONLY clause when taking an ad-hoc full backup to avoid messing up the backup chain. Just in case you haven’t: You should add the COPY_ONLY clause when taking an ad-hoc full backup to avoid messing up the backup chain. But you may be asking why? What exactly…
Managing Backup Issues in Availability Groups
A user asked me the other day how to go about managing backup issues in Availability Groups. Well, Minion Backup is fully Availability Group aware, and has innovative features that makes it a complete solution. This is one of the big reasons we coded MB: any solution for dealing with the issues