Learn how to write a script for regular database backups using Powershell and SMO.  Read more...

You can download a free eBook from SQLServerCentral and Red Gate software on the most important task a SQL Server DBA or developer needs to understand.  Read more...

You can download a free eBook from SQLServerCentral and Red Gate software on the most important task a SQL Server DBA or developer needs to understand.  Read more...

Back in April Steve Jones wrote up a disaster at work. Andy had one this week and wrote up the story too. Copy cat! Pretty soon everyone will be having a disaster and writing a story about it! Give these guys credit for letting you see what happens when it ALL goes bad. Disaster recovery is hard to sell and hard to do, reading the article might give you an idea that will save you some time and/or data one day.   Read more...

During presentations about doing database backups and restores, there seem to be two 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...

You can download a free eBook from SQLServerCentral and Red Gate software on the most important task a SQL Server DBA or developer needs to understand.  Read more...

Occasionally, a DBA may need to restore a database from a multiple backup files that originated from multiple servers. This requirement might arise, for example, in a database-mirroring configuration, where backups may be from either of the servers.  Read more...

Instant file initialization also has its advantages when you restore a SQLServer database. This article will show you why.  Read more...

Shawn McGehee discusses partial backups, how they're used, and how to avoid potential problems when restoring from a partial backup.  Read more...

Tony Davis argues that the WITH REPLACE option of the RESTORE DATABASE command is a case where the naming of the option masks its true "JFDI" nature…  Read more...

This article describes how to backup a database using a C# Windows Form.   Read more...

Recently I encountered a situation where the backup drive was short of space on the production server. The policy on the production server was that as soon as soon as the Full Backup is complete, a copy of the production backup is transferred to the staging server using RoboCopy  Read more...

Using Powershell to create color coded backup reports for all servers in your environment.  Read more...

This article from Warren Campbell shows a process to recreate permissions in development environments after restoring a database from a production instance.  Read more...

You need to configure transactional replication for a very large SQL Server database. Instead of running the snapshot agent to initialize the subscriber, in this tip we look at how you can initialize the subscriber from a SQL Server backup.  Read more...

What good is a backup if you do not know to restore the backup? In this tutorial you will look at what restore options are available and which options are only accessible using T-SQL commands.  Read more...

Write your database backup to multiple files. In addition to writing your database backup to one file you have the ability to write to multiple files at the same time and therefore split up the workload. The advantage to doing this is that the backup process can run using multiple threads and therefore finish faster as well as having much smaller files that can be moved across the network or copied to a CD or DVD.  Read more...

SQL Server ships with native alerts that can be configured to notify an operator when a backup or restore failure occurs. This chart shows the SQL Server 2000 backup and restore alerts.  Read more...

SQL 2008 has some key improvements over SQL 2005. This article deals with backup compression and faster backups in SQL 2008  Read more...

Thursday, May 26, 2011 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM BST. Steve Jones will be your host to introduce Grant Fritchey, SQL Server MVP and Product Evangelist at Red Gate Software. This webinar will take you through the best practices, standards and methods that you can employ to ensure that you have solid backup processes for the databases under your charge. You’ll also learn how to restore, because your backups are only good if you can restore them. Grant will show you how using Red Gate’s SQL Backup Pro and SQL Virtual Restore can make all this easier and more efficient.   Read more...