Pau Lo
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backing up SQL databases but not underlying system drive
Apologies for the basic level of the question but I wanted some input into the following:
Our DBA backups the user and system databases - and in their opinion that is all they need to backup on the windows database server
They claim that if they needed to rebuild the server hey could do it from scratch with minimal effort.
Question: What is your view on this? What outside of the SQL backups would be included in a backup of the system drive and would be required when rebuilding the DB server from scratch? Why are these so important? Is rebuilding from scratch a lot more effort than restoring the backup? What files in the system backup would need configuring from scratch if building from fresh.
Please keep answers pretty basic and management / risk freindly.
Our DBA backups the user and system databases - and in their opinion that is all they need to backup on the windows database server
They claim that if they needed to rebuild the server hey could do it from scratch with minimal effort.
Question: What is your view on this? What outside of the SQL backups would be included in a backup of the system drive and would be required when rebuilding the DB server from scratch? Why are these so important? Is rebuilding from scratch a lot more effort than restoring the backup? What files in the system backup would need configuring from scratch if building from fresh.
Please keep answers pretty basic and management / risk freindly.
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Aneesh
One more thing I would add to the above settings is storing the database /systems settings somewhere with your backups
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Presume windows patches is another thing you lose when building from scratch which may impact recovery times to get it up to date and secure?
When I build a new server, patches to the current version is part of the new server build. But, yes... building a suitable replacement server could well impact recovery time.
That said... SQL patches are important. When the version of SQL increments from a patch, you can't restore backwards. (I can't think of exceptions off the top of my head.) As an example, if you production SQL is at 11.00.5058 (SQL 2012 SP2), and the new server build is installed with 11.00.3000 (SQL 2012 SP1)... I wouldn't expect the restores to load on the new server until the later patch is installed. (And if production is 11.00.3000 and the new server is built with SQL 11.00.5058... the database upgrade will occur when the database is restored on the new server. In most cases, that doesn't take long, but there isn't a option to not have that upgrade happen. Sometimes that can be important for change control, etc.)
That said... SQL patches are important. When the version of SQL increments from a patch, you can't restore backwards. (I can't think of exceptions off the top of my head.) As an example, if you production SQL is at 11.00.5058 (SQL 2012 SP2), and the new server build is installed with 11.00.3000 (SQL 2012 SP1)... I wouldn't expect the restores to load on the new server until the later patch is installed. (And if production is 11.00.3000 and the new server is built with SQL 11.00.5058... the database upgrade will occur when the database is restored on the new server. In most cases, that doesn't take long, but there isn't a option to not have that upgrade happen. Sometimes that can be important for change control, etc.)
That's true, but if you are very concerned abt the recovery time, and you think your application is critical, you should set up some High Availabity methods like clustering ,mirroring , log shipping etc ..
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