Database Backup/Restore Process

Question

The backup and restore process of a large database or collection of databases on sql server is very important for disaster & recovery purposes. However, I have not found a robust solution that will guarantee the whole process is as efficient as possible, 100% reliable and easily maintainable and configurable accross multiple servers.

Microsft's Maintenance Plans doesn't seem to be sufficient. The best solution I have used is one that I created manually using many jobs with many steps per database running on the source server (backup) and destination server (restore). The jobs use stored procedures to do the backup, copying & restoring. This runs once a day (full backup/restore) and intraday every 5 mins (transaction log shipping).

Although my current process works and reports any job failures via email, I know the whole process isn't very reliable and cannot be easily maintained/configured on all our servers by a non-DBA without having in-depth knowledge of the process.

I would like to know if others have this same backup/restore process and how others overcome this issue.

Answer 1

The key part of your question is the ability for the backup solution to be managed by a non-DBA. Any native SQL Server answer like backup scripts isn't going to meet that need, because backup scripts require T-SQL knowledge.

Because of that, you want to look toward third-party solutions like the ones Mitch Wheat mentioned. I work for Quest (the makers of LiteSpeed) so of course I'm partial to that one - it's easy to show to non-DBAs. Before I left my last company, I had a ten minute session to show the sysadmins and developers how the LiteSpeed console worked, and that was that. They haven't called since.

Another approach is using the same backup software that the rest of your shop uses. TSM, Veritas, Backup Exec and Microsoft DPM all have SQL Server agents that let your Windows admins manage the backup process with varying degrees of ease-of-use. If you really want a non-DBA to manage it, this is probably the most dead-easy way to do it, although you sacrifice a lot of performance that the SQL-specific backup tools give you.

Answer 2

I've used a similar step to keep dev/test/QA databases 'zero-stepped' on a nightly basis for developers and QA folks to use.

Documentation is the key - if you want to remove what Scott Hanselman calls 'bus factor' (i.e. the danger that the creator of the system will get hit by a bus and everything starts to suck).

That said, for normal database backups and disaster recovery plans, I've found that SQL Server Maintenance Plans work out pretty well. As long as you include: 1) Decent documentation 2) Routine testing.

I've outlined some of the ways to go about doing that (for anyone drawn to this question looking for an example of how to go about creating a disaster recovery plan):
SQL Server Backup Best Practices (Free Tutorial/Video)