Being an "accidental DBA," I'm working on becoming a "non-accidental DBA." While my employer put in SQL about 6-7 years ago, as the back-end for a time and attendance application, I've been mostly a "bad" DBA of the "it's working, it's out of mind."

While we / I set up backups in the Maintenance Plan (using wizards, still learning T-SQL,) they've never really been tested. My employer has since added in an accounting package, also SQL back end. While the (originally I think just a consultant, now an employee) was more of an SQL person then myself, I think he's fairly narrowly focused on the accounting package. So, again, I set up the backups (but still a lack of testing said backups.)

Fast forward a couple years.

The other day, I submitted a request to my boss to set up a VM with SQL to test our backups, and for future testing of backups of the application my employer writes, which is going to use SQL (used to be a Foxpro app.)

Haven't heard back, but I think even if he doesn't reply, I'm going to go forward with setting it up and testing. After all, I'm not only the unofficial / official office DBA, I'm also the server admin / network admin / virtualization admin / domain admin. It's not like I'll get stopped needing someone else to help...

😉

Jason