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Category: Backups

Backing SQL Server up to S3 Buckets

Published 2024-08-15 by Kevin Feasel

David Fowler backs up a database:

Way back in the mists of time I wrote a post on how to backup SQL server to an S3 bucket using TNTDrive, https://sqlundercover.com/2018/06/18/backup-your-on-premise-sql-server-directly-to-an-aws-s3-bucket/.

Back then, if we wanted to backup SQL to S3 we needed to use a third party tool. Since SQL 2022 things have changed and we’ve now got the option to backup directly to S3 in a similar way that we can backup to Azure BLOB store.

And, going one step further, you can also use PolyBase to read data from S3 buckets in SQL Server 2022.

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Filesystem Access for Database Restoration via dbatools

Published 2024-08-07 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Levy shares a lesson learned:

While performing an instance migration this spring, I happened upon something I didn’t expect in [dbatools](https://dbatools.io/). It should have been a simple backup/restore copy of the databases, with the backup files residing on a fileshare on the destination server after being copied there. I kept getting a warning that the backup files I was attempting to restore couldn’t be read, and the restores (via Restore-DbaDatabase) wouldn’t execute.

I checked permissions on the server over and over again. Both on the filesystem and for the share that I was attempting to read from. Even more curious, if I executed the restore database statements directly from within Management Studio, the databases restored without issue.

After doing quite a bit of digging, I managed to find the reason.

Read on to learn more about necessary permissions, as well as the issue Andy hit, as well as the solution.

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Restoring a MySQL Table from Filesystem Backup

Published 2024-07-29 by Kevin Feasel

Chad Callihan recovers from a missing database backup:

There may be no worse feeling than needing a database backup and not having one. It ranks right up there with running a DELETE statement and missing the WHERE clause. God help you if you if you suffer both of those together. If you come across that situation with a MySQL database, you might be able to recover what you need.

Read on to see how. Even so, I’d be concerned about what happens if there are foreign key constraints involved.

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A Comparison of Backup Types between SQL Server and Oracle

Published 2024-07-24 by Kevin Feasel

Sergey Gigoyan compares two sets of backups:

It is a well-known fact that backing up databases is one of the most common tasks for any database administrator (DBA), regardless of the relational database management system (RDBMS) used. However, the definition, naming, and structure of backup types can differ for each RDBMS. Therefore, if a DBA switches from one RDBMS to another, dealing with backup types can sometimes be very confusing. For instance, switching to Oracle databases after working with SQL Server databases for a long time can cause some difficulties. DBAs can work through these challenges by understanding the differences in database backup types.

Click through for the comparison. This a good reminder that, just because two things have the same name, doesn’t mean they do the same thing.

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Tips for Using Azure Backup for SQL Server

Published 2024-07-15 by Kevin Feasel

Anna Hoffman, et al, share some tips and tricks:

We recently worked with a customer that migrated their Windows and SQL Servers to Azure that wanted to use Azure Backup for a consistent enterprise backup experience. The SQL Servers had multiple databases of varying sizes, some that were multi-terabyte.  A single Azure Backup vault was deployed using a policy that was distributed to all the SQL Servers. During the migration process, the customer observed issues with the quality of the backups and poor virtual machine performance while the backups were running. We worked through the issues by reviewing the best practices, modifying the Azure Backup configuration, and changing the virtual machine SKU. For this specific example, the customer needed to change their SKU from Standard_E8bds_v5 to Standard_E16bds_v5 to support the additional IOPS and throughput required for the backups.  They used premium SSD v1 and the configuration met the IOPS and throughput requirements.  

In this post, we share some of the techniques we used to identify and resolve the performance issues that were observed. 

Read on to learn more about how Azure Backup works and troubleshooting mechanisms.

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sp_delete_backuphistory Removes Restore History Too

Published 2024-07-09 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones susses out a problem:

I had a customer that was looking to document a restore that had occurred on one of their systems and didn’t see it. They had concerns about SQL Server accurately tracking history across time and noted they hadn’t cleaned any history.

We dug through some of their instance jobs and found one that ran sp_delete_backuphistory. The person didn’t realize this removes restore history as well. This post talks a bit about how this works.

Read on for the full story.

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Have a Recovery Strategy

Published 2024-07-08 by Kevin Feasel

Aaron Bertrand has a public service announcement:

I’ve talked about it before; you shouldn’t have a backup strategy, you should have a recovery strategy. I can’t possibly care if my backups succeed if I’m not bothering to test that they can be restored. And if they can’t be restored then, both technically and practically, I don’t have backups.

In one of the systems I manage, they built a very simple “test restore” process long before I became involved. Every night, it would pull the full backup for each database, restore it on a test system, and run DBCC CHECKDB against it. It would alert on any failure, of course, but the primary purpose was to always be confident that the backups could, in fact, be restored.

Aaron now has a much more robust version of this in place, which you can see in the article.

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Restoring a SQL Server 2000 Backup in 2024

Published 2024-06-20 by Kevin Feasel

Randolph West turns back the clock:

Problem statement: I have a SQL Server 2000 database backup that I need to restore to a supported version of SQL Server (preferably SQL Server 2022). How do I do that?

Read on for Randolph’s answer on how to do this. Pre-2008, things may get a little shaky, as that’s back when Microsoft really deprecated functionality. So even if you do restore a backup using this technique, I do wonder what happens if you were using a deprecated datatype like NTEXT or TIMESTAMP. As of SQL Server 2022, those are still in the product, so I don’t have a good example so much as a bit of niggling paranoia.

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Security Tips for Backups in SQL Server

Published 2024-06-20 by Kevin Feasel

Mike Walsh shares a few tips:

There are obviously many things to check when it comes to SQL Server security. We’re talking about a lot of those elements of security this month. Today I want to talk a little more about backups as it relates to their role in securing your SQL Servers.

When it comes to your backups and security in SQL Server –>

Read on for five tips to help ensure your backup strategy is doing what you intend it to do, but is also not a real attack vector at the same time.

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