Recovery Strategy

  • First off I'm new at this so please be kind.

    Scenario is I'm trying to create a recovery strategy if a Server will not come back online after a restart. There are backups. Mirroring, Replication or any other failover strategy is not in place and won't be for this particular server.

    Basic plan is to restore all DBs onto a new server. But I can't rely solely on that right? I need to create a script to re-create all the logins, right? Re-create jobs and DTS packages too? What else should I do?

    In addition to all of the back ups that will be retrieved from a third-party, should I keep a local backup copy of the master and msdb databases so I can quickly retrieve basic info? Am I able to restore the master and msdb DBs on a clean SQL install with no issues?

    This SQL Server is 2000 but there are also 2005 servers that I will need to create a strategy for as well.

    Look forward to some great advice!

  • David,

    yes, you have to have a set of backups of master/msdb/model DBs. In addition I'd suggest to learn, document and practice the restore process for system databases. There are Microsoft KB articles on that. Just put together a simple step-by-step document which you can follow at the time of failure.

  • It would also be best practice to have a regularly scheduled disaster recovery process with associated procedures to ensure everything works as expected. In addition, I would suggest you look at using the technology within SQL Server (e.g. log shipping, database mirroring etc..), as recovering from backup(s) should be a worst case scenario.

    Phillip Cox

  • Logins will be in master, and you need to know how to restore this. Jobs in msdb, make sure you know how to recover this.

    you might have IP/windows server name changes, be sure you can handle this.

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