Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Bible

Chapter 21

Backup and Recovery Planning

In This Chapter

Understanding the Recovery Models

Backing up User Databases

Understanding and Working with the Transaction Log

Recovering a Lost Database, a Lost System Database, or the Entire Server

The foundation for this book, the Information Architecture Principle (introduced in Chapter 2, “Data Architecture”), puts into words the reason why there must be a solid recovery plan:

Information is an organizational asset, and, according to its value and scope, must be organized, inventoried, secured, and made readily available in a usable format for daily operations and analysis by individuals, groups, and processes, both today and in the future.

It goes without writing that for information to be “readily available…both today and in the future,” regardless of hardware failure, catastrophes, or accidental deletion, there must be a plan B.

Obviously, this is an imperfect world and bad things do happen to good people. Because you're bothering to read this chapter, it's true that performing backups isn't exciting. In some jobs excitement means trouble, and this is one of them. To a good DBA, being prepared for the worst means having a sound recovery plan that has been tested more than once.

Consistent with the flexibility found in other areas of SQL Server, you can perform a backup in multiple ways, each suited to a different purpose. SQL Server offers three recovery models, which help organize the backup options and simplify database administration. ...