Remote backup with SSMS Express

  • Hello, I am new to SQL Server and have ben put in charge of 'database stuff'.

    Recently we have been concerned with Backing up our database because we are not sure if our hosting company does it on a regular basis and also so we can have a local copy of the DB to use for development and looking at the data to track trends, etc.

    I was wondering if there are any security issues if I connect to the Database with SQL Server Management Studio Express to create a backup to my local hard drive. Some seem to believe that since it is the Express edition that the security is not present.

    Also, would this backup be sufficient enough to restore our database should a problem arise?

    By the way, it is SQL Server 2005.

  • SQL Server Express has the same security available as any other Edition of SQL Server. The biggest issue you would have with backing up remotely is latency over your network connection.

    Ideally your provider would provide you with a location on the server to backup to and allow you to ftp the backup file to your local office.

  • Jack has the best idea. Any network hiccup will cause the backup to fail. Run it to the local server and then copy it to your hard drive.

  • Thanks

    I just submitted a ticket to find out where on the server I can put the .bak file and still have ftp access to it.

  • It turns out I am on a shared server so I cannot backup to a directory that is accessable by FTP.

    Looking at SSMS Exp. I cannot find where to backup to my local computer. I browse locations and it opens up the hard drives on the server, not my local hard drive.

    Does anybody have any suggestions as to how I can make a backup on my local computer? I could always write a little windows app in Visual Basic to connect, load the tables into memory, then transfer them to a DB on my local computer, but I reall do not want to make it that difficult. Also, I am not sure about the security of transmitting the connection string with VB.

    They said I could request a one-time backup for free, but I may need to backup and restore more than once. There are paid plans where the backups are automatically done nightly, but if I am doing deveolpment and screw up something I would hate to have to roll back to 12:00am.

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