Datacenter Downtime and SQL backups

  • I was wondering what others are doing in regards to a datacenter outage and their SQL FULL backups. Can I skip the full backups for one night (the weekend of the datacenter being shut down) and still have my DIFFs work the next week (based on the full from the previous week?

    Just to be clearer, here is a mini-schedule on what I'm asking;

    Friday FULL completed, Tues DIFF 1 completed, Thursday DIFF 2 completed, Friday - FULL is skipped, Tuesday DIFF completed

    Will the last Tuesday DIFF run on the first FULL even though the following Friday backup didn't run because I skipped it? Pretty sure that's how it would work, but want to be certain as we will have a datacenter outage next month (power off) and I'd prefer to skip the FULL backup that is scheduled for that weekend, rather than say, alter the schedule and run the FULLS on Thursday before the outage.

  • Yes, the DIFF will.  You can do a DIFF any number of days after a FULL and it should work fine.  If a lot has changed in the db, the restore of the full and the diff may take longer than just restoring a full, but it should still function perfectly.

    SQL DBA,SQL Server MVP(07, 08, 09) A socialist is someone who will give you the shirt off *someone else's* back.

  • Thanks for clarifying Scott!

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