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• Add a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to the Microsoft Robocopy Command Line Tool

  - by Lori Kaufman

  Robocopy, or “Robust File Copy,” is a command line directory replication tool from Microsoft. It is available as part of Windows 7 and Vista as a standard feature, and was available as part of the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit. NOTE: For Windows XP, you can obtain Robocopy by downloading the resource kit. Robocopy allows you to setup simple or advanced backup strategies. It provides such features as multi-threaded copying, mirroring or synchronization mode, automatic retry, and the ability to resume the copying process. If you are comfortable with using command line tools, you can run Robocopy directly on the command line using the command syntax and options. You can also download the command line reference and usage notes for Robocopy as a PDF file. If you are more comfortable using a graphical user interface, or GUI, rather than the command line, there are a couple of options for adding a GUI to the Robocopy command line tool, making it easier to use. Both tools, RoboMirror and RichCopy, are discussed below and links to download each tool are provided. How to Factory Reset Your Android Phone or Tablet When It Won’t Boot Our Geek Trivia App for Windows 8 is Now Available Everywhere How To Boot Your Android Phone or Tablet Into Safe Mode

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• The Best Articles for Backing Up and Syncing Your Data

  - by Lori Kaufman

  World Backup Day is March 31st and we decided to provide you with some useful information to make backing up your data easier. We’ve published articles about backing up various types of data and settings both offline and online. There’s all kinds of settings on your computer to backup in addition to your personal data, such as Wi-Fi passwords, drivers, and settings for programs like web browsers, Office, and Windows Live Writer. There are also many tools available to help you keep your data and settings backed up. Make Your Own Windows 8 Start Button with Zero Memory Usage Reader Request: How To Repair Blurry Photos HTG Explains: What Can You Find in an Email Header?

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• Copy Only Backups for Adhoc Backups

  Introduction In most organizations backup plans are implemented using full differential and transactional log backups. The normal scenario would be take a full backup on Sunday (off peak hours), differential backup daily at mid-night and transactional log backups on hourly basis. What ... [Read Full Article]

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• Optimal way to make MySQL backups for fairly large databases (MyISAM / InnoDB)

  - by WinkyWolly

  Currently we have one beefy MySQL database that runs a couple of high traffic Django based websites as well as some e-commerce websites of decent size. As a result we have a fair amount of large databases using both InnoDB and MyISAM tables. Unfortunately we've recently hit a wall due to the amount of traffic so I've setup another master server to help alleviate reads / backups. Now at the moment I simply use mysqldump with a few arguments and it's proven to be fine.. until now. Obviously mysqldump is a slow quick method however I believe we've outgrown its use. I now need a good alternative and have been looking into utilizing Maatkits mk-parallel-dump utility or an LVM snapshot solution. Succinct short version: I have a fairly large MySQL databases I need to backup Current method using mysqldump is inefficient and slow (causing issues) Looking into something such as mk-parallel-dump or LVM snapshots Any recommendations or ideas would be appreciated - since I have to re-do how we're doing things I rather have it done properly / most efficient :).

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• Incremental Backups / Versioned backups using PHP

  - by Adam

  I'm trying to backup a folder containing several folders and files to a remote location (will be uploading zipped files). Is there any existing scripts that may help me, which checks if the files have been modified after the date of the last backup, and only backs up files created / modified after that? The current size of the data is around 1gb, and I expect adding 50mb-200mb each month Also, what would be the best way to extract the state of the files on a specific date?

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• SQL transaction log backups conflicting with full backups?

  - by BradC

  On our SQL servers (2000, 2005, and 2008), we run full backups once a day in the evening, and transaction log backups every 2 hrs. We haven't really worried about these two processes conflicting, but lately we've run into some of the following issues: On one server, the trans log backup occasionally blocks the full backup, and must be manually stopped before the full backup can complete We sometimes end up with a massively-sized trans log backup file (sometimes larger than the full backup!) that seems to occur at the same time the full backup is running. I found a reference that indicate that these are "not allowed" to run at the same time, whatever that means: SQL 2000 Books Online and SQL 2005 Books Online. I'm not sure whether that means that the server will simply prevent them from running simultaneously, or if we ought to be explicitly stopping the log backups while the full backups are running. So are there known conflicts/issues between these? Does the answer differ between SQL versions? Should I have the trans log backup job check to see if the full backup is running before it executes? (and how do I do that...?)

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• Verifying Time Machine backups

  - by jtimberman

  I'm preparing my system for a Snow Leopard upgrade, and I prepare for the worst case scenario: full reinstall and restore. I would like to verify that my Time Machine backups are valid, and will restore correctly. My Time Machine backups go to a Linux server running Netatalk, and the backups complete successfully. How do I do a test restore to an alternative location, or otherwise verify my data without overwriting any existing files? Do I need to save anything in particular externally to make sure I can access the backups if I have to reinstall from scratch?

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• SQL SERVER – Sends backups to a Network Folder, FTP Server, Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon S3

  - by pinaldave

  Let me tell you about one of the most useful SQL tools that every DBA should use – it is SQLBackupAndFTP. I have been using this tool since 2009 – and it is the first program I install on a SQL server. Download a free version, 1 minute configuration and your daily backups are safe in the cloud. In summary, SQLBackupAndFTP Creates SQL Server database and file backups on schedule Compresses and encrypts the backups Sends backups to a network folder, FTP Server, Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon S3 Sends email notifications of job’s success or failure SQLBackupAndFTP comes in Free and Paid versions (starting from $29) – see version comparison. Free version is fully functional for unlimited ad hoc backups or for scheduled backups of up to two databases – it will be sufficient for many small customers. What has impressed me from the beginning – is that I understood how it works and was able to configure the job from a single form (see Image 1 – Main form above) Connect to you SQL server and select databases to be backed up Click “Add backup destination” to configure where backups should go to (network, FTP Server, Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon S3) Enter your email to receive email confirmations Set the time to start daily full backups (or go to Settings if you need Differential or  Transaction Log backups on a flexible schedule) Press “Run Now” button to test You can get to this form if you click “Settings” buttons in the “Schedule section”. Select what types of backups and how often you want to run them and you will see the scheduled backups in the “Estimated backup plan” list A detailed tutorial is available on the developer’s website. Along with SQLBackupAndFTP setup gives you the option to install “One-Click SQL Restore” (you can install it stand-alone too) – a basic tool for restoring just Full backups. However basic, you can drag-and-drop on it the zip file created by SQLBackupAndFTP, it unzips the BAK file if necessary, connects to the SQL server on the start, selects the right database, it is smart enough to restart the server to drop open connections if necessary – very handy for developers who need to restore databases often. You may ask why is this tool is better than maintenance tasks available in SQL Server? While maintenance tasks are easy to set up, SQLBackupAndFTP is still way easier and integrates solution for compression, encryption, FTP, cloud storage and email which make it superior to maintenance tasks in every aspect. On a flip side SQLBackupAndFTP is not the fanciest tool to manage backups or check their health. It only works reliably on local SQL Server instances. In other words it has to be installed on the SQL server itself. For remote servers it uses scripting which is less reliable. This limitations is actually inherent in SQL server itself as BACKUP DATABASE command  creates backup not on the client, but on the server itself. This tool is compatible with almost all the known SQL Server versions. It works with SQL Server 2008 (all versions) and many of the previous versions. It is especially useful for SQL Server Express 2005 and SQL Server Express 2008, as they lack built in tools for backup. I strongly recommend this tool to all the DBAs. They must absolutely try it as it is free and does exactly what it promises. You can download your free copy of the tool from here. Please share your experience about using this tool. I am eager to receive your feedback regarding this article. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• Advantages of SQL Backup Pro

  - by Grant Fritchey

  Getting backups of your databases in place is a fundamental issue for protection of the business. Yes, I said business, not data, not databases, but business. Because of a lack of good, tested, backups, companies have gone completely out of business or suffered traumatic financial loss. That’s just a simple fact (outlined with a few examples here). So you want to get backups right. That’s a big part of why we make Red Gate SQL Backup Pro work the way it does. Yes, you could just use native backups, but you’ll be missing a few advantages that we provide over and above what you get out of the box from Microsoft. Let’s talk about them. Guidance If you’re a hard-core DBA with 20+ years of experience on every version of SQL Server and several other data platforms besides, you may already know what you need in order to get a set of tested backups in place. But, if you’re not, maybe a little help would be a good thing. To set up backups for your servers, we supply a wizard that will step you through the entire process. It will also act to guide you down good paths. For example, if your databases are in Full Recovery, you should set up transaction log backups to run on a regular basis. When you choose a transaction log backup from the Backup Type you’ll see that only those databases that are in Full Recovery will be listed: This makes it very easy to be sure you have a log backup set up for all the databases you should and none of the databases where you won’t be able to. There are other examples of guidance throughout the product. If you have the responsibility of managing backups but very little knowledge or time, we can help you out. Throughout the software you’ll notice little green question marks. You can see two in the screen above and more in each of the screens in other topics below this one. Clicking on these will open a window with additional information about the topic in question which should help to guide you through some of the tougher decisions you may have to make while setting up your backup jobs. Here’s an example: Backup Copies As a part of the wizard you can choose to make a copy of your backup on your network. This process runs as part of the Red Gate SQL Backup engine. It will copy your backup, after completing the backup so it doesn’t cause any additional blocking or resource use within the backup process, to the network location you define. Creating a copy acts as a mechanism of protection for your backups. You can then backup that copy or do other things with it, all without affecting the original backup file. This requires either an additional backup or additional scripting to get it done within the native Microsoft backup engine. Offsite Storage Red Gate offers you the ability to immediately copy your backup to the cloud as a further, off-site, protection of your backups. It’s a service we provide and expose through the Backup wizard. Your backup will complete first, just like with the network backup copy, then an asynchronous process will copy that backup to cloud storage. Again, this is built right into the wizard or even the command line calls to SQL Backup, so it’s part a single process within your system. With native backup you would need to write additional scripts, possibly outside of T-SQL, to make this happen. Before you can use this with your backups you’ll need to do a little setup, but it’s built right into the product to get this done. You’ll be directed to the web site for our hosted storage where you can set up an account. Compression If you have SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, or you’re on SQL Server 2008R2 or greater and you have a Standard or Enterprise license, then you have backup compression. It’s built right in and works well. But, if you need even more compression then you might want to consider Red Gate SQL Backup Pro. We offer four levels of compression within the product. This means you can get a little compression faster, or you can just sacrifice some CPU time and get even more compression. You decide. For just a simple example I backed up AdventureWorks2012 using both methods of compression. The resulting file from native was 53mb. Our file was 33mb. That’s a file that is smaller by 38%, not a small number when we start talking gigabytes. We even provide guidance here to help you determine which level of compression would be right for you and your system: So for this test, if you wanted maximum compression with minimum CPU use you’d probably want to go with Level 2 which gets you almost as much compression as Level 3 but will use fewer resources. And that compression is still better than the native one by 10%. Restore Testing Backups are vital. But, a backup is just a file until you restore it. How do you know that you can restore that backup? Of course, you’ll use CHECKSUM to validate that what was read from disk during the backup process is what gets written to the backup file. You’ll also use VERIFYONLY to check that the backup header and the checksums on the backup file are valid. But, this doesn’t do a complete test of the backup. The only complete test is a restore. So, what you really need is a process that tests your backups. This is something you’ll have to schedule separately from your backups, but we provide a couple of mechanisms to help you out here. First, when you create a backup schedule, all done through our wizard which gives you as much guidance as you get when running backups, you get the option of creating a reminder to create a job to test your restores. You can enable this or disable it as you choose when creating your scheduled backups. Once you’re ready to schedule test restores for your databases, we have a wizard for this as well. After you choose the databases and restores you want to test, all configurable for automation, you get to decide if you’re going to restore to a specified copy or to the original database: If you’re doing your tests on a new server (probably the best choice) you can just overwrite the original database if it’s there. If not, you may want to create a new database each time you test your restores. Another part of validating your backups is ensuring that they can pass consistency checks. So we have DBCC built right into the process. You can even decide how you want DBCC run, which error messages to include, limit or add to the checks being run. With this you could offload some DBCC checks from your production system so that you only run the physical checks on your production box, but run the full check on this backup. That makes backup testing not just a general safety process, but a performance enhancer as well: Finally, assuming the tests pass, you can delete the database, leave it in place, or delete it regardless of the tests passing. All this is automated and scheduled through the SQL Agent job on your servers. Running your databases through this process will ensure that you don’t just have backups, but that you have tested backups. Single Point of Management If you have more than one server to maintain, getting backups setup could be a tedious process. But, with Red Gate SQL Backup Pro you can connect to multiple servers and then manage all your databases and all your servers backups from a single location. You’ll be able to see what is scheduled, what has run successfully and what has failed, all from a single interface without having to connect to different servers. Log Shipping Wizard If you want to set up log shipping as part of a disaster recovery process, it can frequently be a pain to get configured correctly. We supply a wizard that will walk you through every step of the process including setting up alerts so you’ll know should your log shipping fail. Summary You want to get your backups right. As outlined above, Red Gate SQL Backup Pro will absolutely help you there. We supply a number of processes and functionalities above and beyond what you get with SQL Server native. Plus, with our guidance, hints and reminders, you will get your backups set up in a way that protects your business.

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• SQL Server Offsite Backups

  - by Eric Maibach

  We have about !TB of SQL Server databases, and these databases generate about 200GB of data changes each day. Up to this point we have been doing Weekly full backups, daily diff backups, and hourly transaction log backups. The full and diff backups are backed up to tape and taken offsite each day. We have been trying to move away from tapes, and our IT department purchased a Barracuda Backup device that backups up data and then sends it offsite using our internet connection. I have been trying to get this to work for our SQL Server backups, and have ran into a number of problems. I normally like to just use SQL Server to perform backups instead of trying to use a agent, so that is what I tried first. However the Barracuda device was not able to dedup these files very well, so it ended up being to much data to try to send offsite and to archive. I then tried installing the Barracuda agent and using it to backup the SQL Server databases. However the problem I am having there is that on some of the database servers I also have files that need backed up, and I cannot find a way to create seperate backup schedules for the file backups and the SQL Server backups. Barracuda only does full or transaction log backups. So if I want to do hourly transaction log backups I end up doing a file system backup every hour (which is not good), or if I only schedule the backups to run once a night I either have to do a full backup every night, or only do a transaction backup once a day. None of these scenarios are good options. My question is, how is everyone else getting their large SQL Server database backups offsite. Are you just using tape, or have you found a offsite backup device that works well? Is anybody else using Barracuda to backup their SQL Server databases? If you do, then how do you have it setup?

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• Good Secure Backups Developers at Home

  - by slashmais

  What is a good, secure, method to do backups, for programmers who do research & development at home and cannot afford to lose any work? Conditions: The backups must ALWAYS be within reasonably easy reach. Internet connection cannot be guaranteed to be always available. The solution must be either FREE or priced within reason, and subject to 2 above. Status Report This is for now only considering free options. The following open-source projects are suggested in the answers (here & elsewhere): BackupPC is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up Linux, WinXX and MacOSX PCs and laptops to a server's disk. Storebackup is a backup utility that stores files on other disks. mybackware: These scripts were developed to create SQL dump files for basic disaster recovery of small MySQL installations. Bacula is [...] to manage backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across a network of computers of different kinds. In technical terms, it is a network based backup program. AutoDL 2 and Sec-Bk: AutoDL 2 is a scalable transport independant automated file transfer system. It is suitable for uploading files from a staging server to every server on a production server farm [...] Sec-Bk is a set of simple utilities to securely back up files to a remote location, even a public storage location. rsnapshot is a filesystem snapshot utility for making backups of local and remote systems. rbme: Using rsync for backups [...] you get perpetual incremental backups that appear as full backups (for each day) and thus allow easy restore or further copying to tape etc. Duplicity backs directories by producing encrypted tar-format volumes and uploading them to a remote or local file server. [...] uses librsync, [for] incremental archives Other Possibilities: Using a Distributed Version Control System (DVCS) such as Git(/Easy Git), Bazaar, Mercurial answers the need to have the backup available locally. Use free online storage space as a remote backup, e.g.: compress your work/backup directory and mail it to your gmail account. Strategies See crazyscot's answer

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• Data Protection Manager System Protection Backups Failing

  - by TrueDuality

  I'm just starting to setup DPM 2010 in a test environment with a Domain Controller and a File Server. Everything seem to be working fairly well and I can get all of my backup jobs to succeed except for the "Computer\System Protection" backups. Both servers are running fully up to date 64 bit Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise with Service Pack 1. The error that is being provided is: DPM cannot create a backup because Windows Server Backup (WSB) on the protected computer encountered an error (WSB Event ID: 517, WSB Error Code: 0x8078001D). (ID 30229 Details: Internal error code: 0x809909FB) This Microsoft Knowledge Base article describes the issue perfectly and provides a hotfix. I downloaded the hotfix, moved it onto the affected server, attempt to run it and receive the following error: The update is not applicable to your computer. I've verified that I have indeed downloaded the 64 bit version. According to this thread the hotfix got rolled into Service Pack 1, yet I'm still experiencing the issue. Both machines do have the Windows Server Backup feature installed. Can anybody point me in the right direction? What am I missing?

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• Web hosting providers for businesses (with offsite backups, disaster recovery options, etc.) [closed]

  - by Harry Muscle

  Possible Duplicate: How to find web hosting that meets my requirements? I'm wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of a couple of web hosting providers that are geared towards businesses. By this I mean providers that make it easy to create daily off site backups, are aware that websites require disaster recovery options and have these in place or are able to assist with them, etc. We currently have about a dozen sites with various providers, however, I've been asked to consolidate all of these into one provider and create a full disaster recovery plan. Unfortunately it seems like most providers are geared towards average users that don't require all these extra bells and whistles that businesses need. For example, HostGator, which is a very popular and well reviewed provider, doesn't even allow you to schedule full backups, they have to be manually requested via cPanel and then downloaded once available. If anyone can point out a couple companies that might be able to help with these sorts of things that would be much appreciated. Thanks, Harry P.S. I should also add that we are hoping to stay away from having to manage our own server, we're hoping for a fully managed solution like what HostGator would offer for example.

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• DBA Best Practices - A Blog Series: Episode 1 - Backups

  - by Argenis

    This blog post is part of the DBA Best Practices series, on which various topics of concern for daily database operations are discussed. Your feedback and comments are very much welcome, so please drop by the comments section and be sure to leave your thoughts on the subject. Morning Coffee When I was a DBA, the first thing I did when I sat down at my desk at work was checking that all backups had completed successfully. It really was more of a ritual, since I had a dual system in place to check for backup completion: 1) the scheduled agent jobs to back up the databases were set to alert the NOC in failure, and 2) I had a script run from a central server every so often to check for any backup failures. Why the redundancy, you might ask. Well, for one I was once bitten by the fact that database mail doesn't work 100% of the time. Potential causes for failure include issues on the SMTP box that relays your server email, firewall problems, DNS issues, etc. And so to be sure that my backups completed fine, I needed to rely on a mechanism other than having the servers do the taking - I needed to interrogate the servers and ask each one if an issue had occurred. This is why I had a script run every so often. Some of you might have monitoring tools in place like Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) or similar 3rd party products that would track all these things for you. But at that moment, we had no resort but to write our own Powershell scripts to do it. Now it goes without saying that if you don't have backups in place, you might as well find another career. Your most sacred job as a DBA is to protect the data from a disaster, and only properly safeguarded backups can offer you peace of mind here. "But, we have a cluster...we don't need backups" Sadly I've heard this line more than I would have liked to. You need to understand that a cluster is comprised of shared storage, and that is precisely your single point of failure. A cluster will protect you from an issue at the Operating System level, and also under an outage of any SQL-related service or dependent devices. But it will most definitely NOT protect you against corruption, nor will it protect you against somebody deleting data from a table - accidentally or otherwise. Backup, fine. How often do I take a backup? The answer to this is something you will hear frequently when working with databases: it depends. What does it depend on? For one, you need to understand how much data your business is willing to lose. This is what's called Recovery Point Objective, or RPO. If you don't know how much data your business is willing to lose, you need to have an honest and realistic conversation about data loss expectations with your customers, internal or external. From my experience, their first answer to the question "how much data loss can you withstand?" will be "zero". In that case, you will need to explain how zero data loss is very difficult and very costly to achieve, even in today's computing environments. Do you want to go ahead and take full backups of all your databases every hour, or even every day? Probably not, because of the impact that taking a full backup can have on a system. That's what differential and transaction log backups are for. Have I answered the question of how often to take a backup? No, and I did that on purpose. You need to think about how much time you have to recover from any event that requires you to restore your databases. This is what's called Recovery Time Objective. Again, if you go ask your customer how long of an outage they can withstand, at first you will get a completely unrealistic number - and that will be your starting point for discussing a solution that is cost effective. The point that I'm trying to get across is that you need to have a plan. This plan needs to be practiced, and tested. Like a football playbook, you need to rehearse the moves you'll perform when the time comes. How often is up to you, and the objective is that you feel better about yourself and the steps you need to follow when emergency strikes. A backup is nothing more than an untested restore Backups are files. Files are prone to corruption. Put those two together and realize how you feel about those backups sitting on that network drive. When was the last time you restored any of those? Restoring your backups on another box - that, by the way, doesn't have to match the specs of your production server - will give you two things: 1) peace of mind, because now you know that your backups are good and 2) a place to offload your consistency checks with DBCC CHECKDB or any of the other DBCC commands like CHECKTABLE or CHECKCATALOG. This is a great strategy for VLDBs that cannot withstand the additional load created by the consistency checks. If you choose to offload your consistency checks to another server though, be sure to run DBCC CHECKDB WITH PHYSICALONLY on the production server, and if you're using SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 CU4 and above, be sure to enable traceflags 2562 and/or 2549, which will speed up the PHYSICALONLY checks further - you can read more about this enhancement here. Back to the "How Often" question for a second. If you have the disk, and the network latency, and the system resources to do so, why not backup the transaction log often? As in, every 5 minutes, or even less than that? There's not much downside to doing it, as you will have to clear the log with a backup sooner than later, lest you risk running out space on your tlog, or even your drive. The one drawback to this approach is that you will have more files to deal with at restore time, and processing each file will add a bit of extra time to the entire process. But it might be worth that time knowing that you minimized the amount of data lost. Again, test your plan to make sure that it matches your particular needs. Where to back up to? Network share? Locally? SAN volume? This is another topic where everybody has a favorite choice. So, I'll stick to mentioning what I like to do and what I consider to be the best practice in this regard. I like to backup to a SAN volume, i.e., a drive that actually lives in the SAN, and can be easily attached to another server in a pinch, saving you valuable time - you wouldn't need to restore files on the network (slow) or pull out drives out a dead server (been there, done that, it’s also slow!). The key is to have a copy of those backup files made quickly, and, if at all possible, to a remote target on a different datacenter - or even the cloud. There are plenty of solutions out there that can help you put such a solution together. That right there is the first step towards a practical Disaster Recovery plan. But there's much more to DR, and that's material for a different blog post in this series.

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• DBA Best Practices - A Blog Series: Episode 1 - Backups

  - by Argenis

    This blog post is part of the DBA Best Practices series, on which various topics of concern for daily database operations are discussed. Your feedback and comments are very much welcome, so please drop by the comments section and be sure to leave your thoughts on the subject. Morning Coffee When I was a DBA, the first thing I did when I sat down at my desk at work was checking that all backups have completed successfully. It really was more of a ritual, since I had a dual system in place to check for backup completion: 1) the scheduled agent jobs to back up the databases were set to alert the NOC in failure, and 2) I had a script run from a central server every so often to check for any backup failures. Why the redundancy, you might ask. Well, for one I was once bitten by the fact that database mail doesn't work 100% of the time. Potential causes for failure include issues on the SMTP box that relays your server email, firewall problems, DNS issues, etc. And so to be sure that my backups completed fine, I needed to rely on a mechanism other than having the servers do the taking - I needed to interrogate the servers and ask each one if an issue had occurred. This is why I had a script run every so often. Some of you might have monitoring tools in place like Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) or similar 3rd party products that would track all these things for you. But at that moment, we had no resort but to write our own Powershell scripts to do it. Now it goes without saying that if you don't have backups in place, you might as well find another career. Your most sacred job as a DBA is to protect the data from a disaster, and only properly safeguarded backups can offer you peace of mind here. "But, we have a cluster...we don't need backups" Sadly I've heard this line more than I would have liked to. You need to understand that a cluster is comprised of shared storage, and that is precisely your single point of failure. A cluster will protect you from an issue at the Operating System level, and also under an outage of any SQL-related service or dependent devices. But it will most definitely NOT protect you against corruption, nor will it protect you against somebody deleting data from a table - accidentally or otherwise. Backup, fine. How often do I take a backup? The answer to this is something you will hear frequently when working with databases: it depends. What does it depend on? For one, you need to understand how much data your business is willing to lose. This is what's called Recovery Point Objective, or RPO. If you don't know how much data your business is willing to lose, you need to have an honest and realistic conversation about data loss expectations with your customers, internal or external. From my experience, their first answer to the question "how much data loss can you withstand?" will be "zero". In that case, you will need to explain how zero data loss is very difficult and very costly to achieve, even in today's computing environments. Do you want to go ahead and take full backups of all your databases every hour, or even every day? Probably not, because of the impact that taking a full backup can have on a system. That's what differential and transaction log backups are for. Have I answered the question of how often to take a backup? No, and I did that on purpose. You need to think about how much time you have to recover from any event that requires you to restore your databases. This is what's called Recovery Time Objective. Again, if you go ask your customer how long of an outage they can withstand, at first you will get a completely unrealistic number - and that will be your starting point for discussing a solution that is cost effective. The point that I'm trying to get across is that you need to have a plan. This plan needs to be practiced, and tested. Like a football playbook, you need to rehearse the moves you'll perform when the time comes. How often is up to you, and the objective is that you feel better about yourself and the steps you need to follow when emergency strikes. A backup is nothing more than an untested restore Backups are files. Files are prone to corruption. Put those two together and realize how you feel about those backups sitting on that network drive. When was the last time you restored any of those? Restoring your backups on another box - that, by the way, doesn't have to match the specs of your production server - will give you two things: 1) peace of mind, because now you know that your backups are good and 2) a place to offload your consistency checks with DBCC CHECKDB or any of the other DBCC commands like CHECKTABLE or CHECKCATALOG. This is a great strategy for VLDBs that cannot withstand the additional load created by the consistency checks. If you choose to offload your consistency checks to another server though, be sure to run DBCC CHECKDB WITH PHYSICALONLY on the production server, and if you're using SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 CU4 and above, be sure to enable traceflags 2562 and/or 2549, which will speed up the PHYSICALONLY checks further - you can read more about this enhancement here. Back to the "How Often" question for a second. If you have the disk, and the network latency, and the system resources to do so, why not backup the transaction log often? As in, every 5 minutes, or even less than that? There's not much downside to doing it, as you will have to clear the log with a backup sooner than later, lest you risk running out space on your tlog, or even your drive. The one drawback to this approach is that you will have more files to deal with at restore time, and processing each file will add a bit of extra time to the entire process. But it might be worth that time knowing that you minimized the amount of data lost. Again, test your plan to make sure that it matches your particular needs. Where to back up to? Network share? Locally? SAN volume? This is another topic where everybody has a favorite choice. So, I'll stick to mentioning what I like to do and what I consider to be the best practice in this regard. I like to backup to a SAN volume, i.e., a drive that actually lives in the SAN, and can be easily attached to another server in a pinch, saving you valuable time - you wouldn't need to restore files on the network (slow) or pull out drives out a dead server (been there, done that, it’s also slow!). The key is to have a copy of those backup files made quickly, and, if at all possible, to a remote target on a different datacenter - or even the cloud. There are plenty of solutions out there that can help you put such a solution together. That right there is the first step towards a practical Disaster Recovery plan. But there's much more to DR, and that's material for a different blog post in this series.

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• Scheduling Automatic Backups for Virtual Private Web Server running CENTOS 6.3 and WHM

  - by Oliver Farrell

  I'm pretty new to administering my own VPS - but thus far am finding it quite a compelling experience. There's something quite refreshing about having complete control over everything it does. One thing that I would like to look at is a suitable backup solution (a few times a day). My current setup is as follows: I'm running a CENTOS 6.3 VPS with a single 25GB hard drive solely for the purpose of hosting websites. I'm using WHM & cPanel for administering them. I now plan on adding an additional hard disk and hooking it up to my VPS. What I'm not sure about is how I get the two disks talking and get the backup process going. I'm not a seasons SSH-er so don't really know where to start. I'm hosting with Serverlove (one of the best hosting providers I've used) and am provided with a number of unique identifiers for each hard disk so I imagine these may play a part in linking them together. I appreciate that this is a little vague (I'm clutching at straws) but any assistance is very much appreciated.

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• Brainless Backups

  - by Jesse

  I’m a software developer by trade which means to my friends and family I’m just a “computer guy”. It’s assumed that I know everything about every facet of computing from removing spyware to replacing hardware. I also can do all of this blindly over the phone or after hearing a five to ten word description of the problem over dinner ;-) In my position as CIO of my friends and families I’ve been in the unfortunate position of trying to recover music, pictures, or documents off of failed hard drives on more than one occasion. It’s not a great situation for anyone, and it’s always at these times that the importance of backups becomes so clear. Several months back a friend of mine found himself in this situation. The hard drive on his 8 year old laptop failed and took a good number of his digital photos with it. I think most folks can deal with losing some of their music and even some of their documents, but it really stings to lose pictures of past events and loved ones. After ordering a new laptop, my friend went out and bought an external hard drive so that he could start keeping a backup of his data. As fate would have it, several months later the drive in his new laptop failed and he learned the hard way that simply buying the external hard drive isn’t enough… you actually have to copy your stuff over every once in awhile! The importance of backup and recovery plans is (hopefully) well known in IT organizations. Well executed backup plans are in place, and hopefully the backup and recovery process is tested regularly. When you’re talking about users at home, however, the need for these backups is often understood far too late. Most typical users can’t be expected to remember to backup their data regularly and also don’t always have the know-how to setup automated backups. For my friends and family members in this situation I recommend tools like Dropbox, Carbonite, and Mozy. Here’s why I like them: They’re affordable: Dropbox and Mozy both have free offerings, though most people with lots of music and/or photos to backup will probably exceed the storage limitations of those free plans pretty quickly. Still, all three offer pretty affordable monthly or yearly plans. In my opinion, Carbonite’s unlimited storage plan for $50-$60 per year is the best value around. They’re easy to setup: Both Dropbox and Carbonite are very easy to get setup and start using. I’ve never used Mozy, but I imagine it’s similarly painless to get up and running. Backups are automatically “off-site”: A backup that is sitting on an external hard drive right next to your computer is great, but might not protect against flood damage, a power surge, or other disasters in that single location. These services exist “in the cloud” so to speak, helping mitigate those concerns. Granted, this kind of backup scheme requires some trust in the 3rd party to protect your data from both malicious people and disastrous events. This truly is a bit of a double edged sword, but I sleep well at night knowing that my data is being backed up and secured by a company made up of engineers that focus on the business of doing backups right. Backups are “brainless”: What I like most about services like these is that they work “automagically” in the background, watching for files to be updated and automatically backing up those changes. There’s no need to remember to plug in that external drive and copy your data over. Since starting to recommend these services to my friends and family I find myself wearing my “data recovery” hat far less often. The only way backups are effective for your standard computer user is if they’re completely automatic. Backups need to be brainless, or they just won’t work.

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• Concurrent backups in SQL Server?

  - by Mikey Cee

  We currently have our backups managed by a third party company. There are a bunch of agent jobs created that take full backups (4 times a day) and transaction log backups (4 times an hour). We now want to manage our backups in house, but don't want to disable the third party's jobs until we are sure that we have everything configured correctly internally So I am proposing to have a short period (say, a couple of days) where backups are being taken both by the old and the new system. I am wondering what the ramifications of having these two different systems both manage backups, and the potential pitfalls of having backups taken simultaneously. Is this even supported? If so, and bearing in mind that the system can cope with one backup without any noticeable performance degradation, is it fairly logical to assume that it should be able to cope with two simultaneous backups? Currently the load on the server is fairly light and it rarely struggles. Any advice is appreciated

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• rsnapshot for remote backups...

  - by Patrick

  I want to use rsnapshot to make backups from my production server to a remote backups server. Should I install rsnapshot on the remote backup server and not the production one, right ? rsnapshot is going to pull the files to backup from the production server and store them locally on the backup server ? I've just realized that I don't have sudo privilegies on the backup server. Does this mean I cannot use rsnapshot for remote backups ? thanks

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• i don't receive mail notification...Nagios Core 4

  - by alessio

  I have a problem with automatically mail notification in Nagios Core 4 installed on ubuntu 12 .04 lts server... i have tried to send mail with nagios user and root user with the command: echo "test" | mail -s "test mail" [email protected] and i received mail correctly... but i don't receive any automatically mail notification... i don't know how can i do to resolve this issue! :( these are my configuration files (commands.cfg, contacts.cfg, nagios.log, mail.log): commands.cfg (the path /usr/bin/mail is the right path): # 'notify-host-by-email' command definition define command{ command_name notify-host-by-email command_line /usr/bin/printf "%b" "***** Nagios *****\n\nNotification Type: $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$\nHost: $HOSTNAME$\nState: $HOSTSTATE$\nAddress: $HOSTADDRESS$\nInfo: $HOSTOUTPUT$\n\nDate/Time: $LONGDATETIME$\n" | /usr/bin/mail -s "** $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$ Host Alert: $HOSTNAME$ is $HOSTSTATE$ **" $CONTACTEMAIL$ } # 'notify-service-by-email' command definition define command{ command_name notify-service-by-email command_line /usr/bin/printf "%b" "***** Nagios *****\n\nNotification Type: $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$\n\nService: $SERVICEDESC$\nHost: $HOSTALIAS$\nAddress: $HOSTADDRESS$\nState: $SERVICESTATE$\n\nDate/Time: $LONGDATETIME$\n\nAdditional Info:\n\n$SERVICEOUTPUT$\n" | /usr/bin/mail -s "** $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$ Service Alert: $HOSTALIAS$/$SERVICEDESC$ is $SERVICESTATE$ **" $CONTACTEMAIL$ } # 'process-host-perfdata' command definition define command{ command_name process-host-perfdata command_line /usr/bin/printf "%b" "$LASTHOSTCHECK$\t$HOSTNAME$\t$HOSTSTATE$\t$HOSTATTEMPT$\t$HOSTSTATETYPE$\t$HOSTEXECUTIONTIME$\t$HOSTOUTPUT$\t$HOSTPERFDATA$\n" >> /usr/local/nagios/var/host-perfdata.out } # 'process-service-perfdata' command definition define command{ command_name process-service-perfdata command_line /usr/bin/printf "%b" "$LASTSERVICECHECK$\t$HOSTNAME$\t$SERVICEDESC$\t$SERVICESTATE$\t$SERVICEATTEMPT$\t$SERVICESTATETYPE$\t$SERVICEEXECUTIONTIME$\t$SERVICELATENCY$\t$SERVICEOUTPUT$\t$SERVICEPERFDATA$\n" >> /usr/local/nagios/var/service-perfdata.out } contacts.cfg: define contact{ contact_name supporto alias Supporto Clienti DEA service_notification_period 24x7 host_notification_period 24x7 service_notification_options w,u,c,r host_notification_options d,r service_notification_commands notify-service-by-email host_notification_commands notify-host-by-email email [email protected] } define contactgroup{ contactgroup_name admins alias Nagios Administrators members supporto } nagios.log: [1401871412] SERVICE ALERT: fileserver;Current Users;OK;SOFT;2;USERS OK - 1 users currently logged in [1401871953] SERVICE ALERT: backups;Nagios Status;WARNING;SOFT;1;NAGIOS WARNING: 36 processes, status log updated 541 seconds ago [1401872133] SERVICE ALERT: backups;Nagios Status;OK;SOFT;2;NAGIOS OK: 36 processes, status log updated 180 seconds ago [1401872321] SERVICE ALERT: posta;Swap Usage;CRITICAL;SOFT;1;CRITICAL - Plugin timed out after 10 seconds [1401872322] SERVICE ALERT: fileserver;Current Users;CRITICAL;SOFT;1;CRITICAL - Plugin timed out after 10 seconds [1401872420] SERVICE ALERT: archivio;Disk Space;CRITICAL;SOFT;1;CRITICAL - Plugin timed out after 10 seconds [1401872492] SERVICE ALERT: fileserver;Current Users;OK;SOFT;2;USERS OK - 1 users currently logged in [1401872492] SERVICE ALERT: posta;Swap Usage;OK;SOFT;2;SWAP OK: 100% free (1984 MB out of 1984 MB) [1401872590] SERVICE ALERT: archivio;Disk Space;OK;SOFT;2;DISK OK [1401872931] Auto-save of retention data completed successfully. [1401873333] SERVICE ALERT: backups;Nagios Status;WARNING;SOFT;1;NAGIOS WARNING: 36 processes, status log updated 402 seconds ago [1401873513] SERVICE ALERT: backups;Nagios Status;OK;SOFT;2;NAGIOS OK: 36 processes, status log updated 180 seconds ago mail.log (i think that the problem is here but i don't know how to resolve it): Jun 4 10:00:01 backups sm-msp-queue[6109]: My unqualified host name (backups) unknown; sleeping for retry Jun 4 10:01:01 backups sm-msp-queue[6109]: unable to qualify my own domain name (backups) -- using short name Jun 4 10:20:01 backups sm-msp-queue[7247]: My unqualified host name (backups) unknown; sleeping for retry Jun 4 10:21:01 backups sm-msp-queue[7247]: unable to qualify my own domain name (backups) -- using short name Jun 4 10:40:01 backups sm-msp-queue[8327]: My unqualified host name (backups) unknown; sleeping for retry Jun 4 10:41:01 backups sm-msp-queue[8327]: unable to qualify my own domain name (backups) -- using short name Jun 4 11:00:01 backups sm-msp-queue[9549]: My unqualified host name (backups) unknown; sleeping for retry Jun 4 11:01:01 backups sm-msp-queue[9549]: unable to qualify my own domain name (backups) -- using short name Jun 4 11:20:01 backups sm-msp-queue[10678]: My unqualified host name (backups) unknown; sleeping for retry Jun 4 11:21:01 backups sm-msp-queue[10678]: unable to qualify my own domain name (backups) -- using short name i'm at the last step and i want to finish this Nagios Core! :) Any help be appreciate!:) host definition (this host have the disk almost full and it is in hard state but non notification) : define host{ use generic-host ; Name of host template to use host_name posta alias Server Posta ESA address 10.10.2.102 parents xen1, xen2 icon_image redhat.png statusmap_image redhat.gd2 } service definition: define service{ use generic-service host_name xen1, maestro, xen2, posta, nas002, serv2, esasrvmi02, esaubuntumi service_description Disk Space check_command ssh_all_disks!10%!5% } Notification is allowed for the contact definition you gave, but is it also allowed at the the service level ? sorry but i don't understand this thing! :(

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• SQL Server transaction log backups,

  - by krimerd

  Hi there, I have a question regarding the transaction log backups in sql server 2008. I am currently taking full backups once a week (Sunday) and transaction log backups daily. I put full backup in folder1 on Sunday and then on Monday I also put the 1st transaction log backup in the same folder. On tuesday, before I take the 2nd transaction log backup I move the first transaction log backup from folder1 an put it into folder2 and then I take the 2nd transaction log backup and put it in the folder1. Same thing on Wed, Thurs and so on. Basicaly in folder1 I always have the latest full backup and the latest transaction log backup while the other transaction log backups are in folder2. My questions is, when sql server is about to take, lets say 4th (Thursday) transaction log backup, does it look for the previous transac log backups (1st, 2nd, and 3rd) so that this new backup will only include the transactions from the last backup or it has some other way of knowing whether there are other transac log backups. Basically, I am asking this because all my transaction log backups seem to be about the same size and I thought that their size will depend on the amount of transactions since the last transaction log backup. Example: If you have a, lets say, full backup and then you take a transac log backup and this transac log backup is lets say 200 MB and now you immediatelly take another transac log backup, this last transac log backup should be considerably smaller than the first one because no or almost no transaction occured between these two backups, right? At least, that's what I've been assuming. What happens in my case is that this second backup is pretty much the same size as the first one and I am wondering if the reason for that is because I moved the first transac log backup to a different folder so now sql server thinks that all I have is just a full backup and it then gets all the transactions that happened since the full backup and puts it in the 2nd transac log backup. Can anyone please explain if my assumptions are right? Thanks...

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• SQL Server 2008 and MySQL Daily Backups

  - by Tyler

  Is there a quick and easy way to backup both SQL Server 2008 and MySQL, all their databases? Right now I have a batch script that runs, but I have to manually add a database each and every time, and I'm sick of maintaining it. So I want to set it up to backup all SQL Server and then all MySQL, I dont care if its two different solutions, just want the ability to backup all the databases without having to type them in. Thank you.

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• SQL Server Central Webinar Series #8: Creating smaller and comprehensively verified backups

  The next webinar from SQLServerCentral will look at backups and how you can create faster, smaller, and verified backups. Join Steve Jones and Rodney Landrum for this presentation on SQL Backup Pro and SQL Virtual Restore The Future of SQL Server Monitoring "Being web-based, SQL Monitor 2.0 enables you to check on your servers from almost any location" Jonathan Allen.Try SQL Monitor now.

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• Files backup utility with incremental backups that would keep backup device clean

  - by Wojtek

  I've tested a few of backup utilities and still haven't found one that would satisfy me. Almost every one of them has two options: - full backup - not an option to use frequently - incremental backup - seems right, but there's one thing about it: Incremental backup builds on a base of a full backup, backing up only those files, that were created/changed. The thing is, that after some time you've got a lot of unwanted files from the old backups bloating your backup device. Also, if you'd accidentally delete your full (first) backup file, then the differential backups would be corrupted (you wouldn't be able to restore them). The thing I'm looking for is a program, that would backup files simply by copying them. It would check the backup device whether it contains the file (unchanged): - if yes, it should proceed to the next file (we've got current version backed up) - if no, it would copy the file to the backup device - if the device contains a file that is no longer on our disk, the program would delete it from the backup device Is there any such utility, that would work this way? If not, do you have any hints on how to backup fairly big amounts of data (around 20gb) quite frequently with incremental backups and not be exposed to those unwanted effects of backup size puffing up?

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• SQL Server transaction log backups,

  - by krimerd

  Hi there, I have a question regarding the transaction log backups in sql server 2008. I am currently taking full backups once a week (Sunday) and transaction log backups daily. I put full backup in folder1 on Sunday and then on Monday I also put the 1st transaction log backup in the same folder. On tuesday, before I take the 2nd transaction log backup I move the first transaction log backup from folder1 an put it into folder2 and then I take the 2nd transaction log backup and put it in the folder1. Same thing on Wed, Thurs and so on. Basicaly in folder1 I always have the latest full backup and the latest transaction log backup while the other transaction log backups are in folder2. My questions is, when sql server is about to take, lets say 4th (Thursday) transaction log backup, does it look for the previous transac log backups (1st, 2nd, and 3rd) so that this new backup will only include the transactions from the last backup or it has some other way of knowing whether there are other transac log backups. Basically, I am asking this because all my transaction log backups seem to be about the same size and I thought that their size will depend on the amount of transactions since the last transaction log backup. Can anyone please explain if my assumptions are right? Thanks...

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