If you are looking for backup and recovery best practices, then this article is for you. The best and the easiest way to backup and restore your databases is to use SqlBak. If you are reading this article, it means that you already know the crucial role of SQL Server database backups. Scheduled backups are the best way to protect your SQL Server database from the disaster. Bellow, you can find a shortlist of backup and recovery best practices.

Backup and Recovery Best Practices

Check all points below, and we hope you will discover something new. So let’s start.

• Keep on the different physical storage of your backups and database files.

As you can see, this isn’t a good idea to store SQL Server database backups and database files on the same physical drive. The reason is that if the failure occurs and your physical drive will be corrupted, you will lose both your SQL Server database backups and your database.

That is why this is the first tip in our backup and recovery best practices. Store your SQL Server database backup in a different place, as far as possible. At first glance, it may seem simple, but if you neglect it, you will lose a lot of data.

• Backup your database according to the schedule

The next tip in our backup and recovery best practices is a backup schedule in order to protect your databases. It is crucial to creating a backup schedule and using it because after some period of time your backups get out of date, the data loss risk is increasing.

• Verify your backups by restoring them on a test server

Probably you are sure that your database is safe after the backup process has finished successfully. But you should remember about the restore process to verify your SQL Server database backups. Without passing the full recovering process, you can not be sure that you have good backups, and your SQL Server database is protected.

So test restoration of your SQL Server database is another tip in our backup and recovery best practices.

• Test your recovery strategies

The next tip, according to our backup and recovery best practices list, is in regard to recovery strategies.

Assume that you are working in a big company, what will you do if the database failure occurs? How much time will you need to restore your SQL Server database to the working state? That is why you need, time to time practice to restore your database on a test server, according to your full backup scenarios.

• During the backup process apply all known verification options

Here is one more tip in our backup and recovery best practices is that it is crucial to apply all known verification options during the backup. Using such options allows you to be sure that all your SQL Server database backups are created in the proper way.

• Perform a full backup of your SQL Server database every day

We highly recommend you make a full backup of your SQL Server database every day. This is the best way to protect your database and prevent any kind of data loss. So this is another tip from our backup and recovery best practices list

To that point, we are going to add one more important thing, like choosing a recovery model. It will be our first line of protection against data loss. Let’s say that if you can accept to lose about 30 or 60 minutes of your work, then you can use a simple recovery model. But you have to remember that you can make only full backups under a simple recovery model.

• Performing differential database backups more frequently

In the previous point, we have discussed that it is crucial to perform a full backup every day. But if you decided to ignore that, remember that you should make differential backup more frequently than a full backup.  This is another tip of the backup and recovery best practices list.

You need to keep in mind that differential backups require less time to be made and less space to be stored. Differential backups contain only information that has been creating since the last full backup. Also, it is necessary to admit that now you should restore two files if the failure occurs, which makes a recovering process more complicated.

• Performing transaction log backups even more frequently than differential backup

The following tip in our backup and recovery best practices list is creating transaction log backups more frequently than differential backups.

Transaction logs contain all the recent changes that have occurred in your SQL Server database. With the help of transaction log backups, you will be able to restore your database to a specific point in time. This is its biggest advantage!

The frequency of every new transaction log backup depends on information that is changed in your database.  If the changes occur frequently, you can perform a transaction log backup every 10 minutes. Another way you can make transaction log backup every 30 or even 60 minutes.

• Don’t forget to backup system databases

Backup system databases from time to time – this is the last tip in our backup and recovery best practices list in this article.

Of course, you can think that following all points above is enough to keep your database safe and sound. But you should remember that backup strategy isn’t complete if you don’t have a backup plan for SQL Server system databases like master, msdb, and model. Backup these databases regularly are crucial because they contain all SQL Server system configuration and SQL Server job information. All this information will be required during the total system restoration process.