DBAs aren’t doctors. Or firefighters, police officers or paramedics. But within the datacenter, a significant database loss could have a major impact on the life and death of a business. Not to mention, your job. While you probably have established various policies and technical processes to ensure database backup and recovery, are you truly confident that files can be restored in the event of an error in the production environment? If you have even a bit of hesitation, stop what you’re doing and test it out. Seriously. Now. Backup testing is critical for a few reasons. First, it’s common that a backup procedural problem will go unnoticed until a recovery is required. Second, as more DBAs use processes like differential backup to reduce storage demand, the complexity of database indexes and maintenance plans increases leaving more room for errors. Improper use and management of differential backups is a backup and recovery no-no. Download the Dell Software whitepaper, “Avoiding Five Painful Backup and Recovery Mistakes with LiteSpeed for SQL Server,” here to learn about others. Some DBAs might even suggest that resources dedicated to testing are more effective than spending extra time on backup and recovery planning. Even the “perfect” plan, built to carefully consider every possible restore scenario (physical corruption, hardware issues, logical corruption, user error or malicious attack) and to accommodate required recovery times to meet SLAs, would be useless if the plan was untested and error-prone. To avoid putting your butt – and job – on the line, consider a few testing best practices: Document and test all recovery plan procedures in each restore scenario – It’s the only way to discover and correct procedural problems. Test procedures in a variety of conditions by introducing variables. For instance, consider running a test at 3:00 a.m. when no DBAs are on site and in the middle of a work day when bandwidth and other IT resources could be strained. Turn on third party tools that can facilitate restore testing as well as to simplify restores in the first place through “undo” functionality (to quickly fix transactional mistakes) and object-level recovery . DBAs use Dell Software’s Litespeed for SQL Server to help with backup and recovery plan formation and testing by streamlining and in some cases automating procedures. If you haven’t taken Litespeed for a test drive yet, now is a great time as you’ll be registered for a FREE pass to PASS Summit 2014 . Download Litespeed HERE for a chance to win.
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