Beyond the monitoring software I use, I have been configuring policies on all my SQL 2008 servers that check to be sure that all but tempdb have had a full backup within the last 25 hours. I haven't lost a database in a long time and even longer without a backup, I'd like to keep it that way.

I've seen a DBA get fired over stuff like this, the last case the DBA did have a backup, from a month ago which in most cases is as bad as not having one at all.. He got lax and even though the monitoring software was sending him "love notes" he didn't resolve the issue. I will give him some cover, he was getting a fair number of alerts but after so long you'd think he would have seen a no backups message..

Even with monitoring in place I will periodically go out to each server and run a script I have that tells me when every single database got its last full backup.

As a DBA a little paranoia goes a long way and some of my "paranoid code" has saved my bacon (and others) more than twice..

CEWII