Category: Backups & Recovery

  • DBA Scripts: Backups and Recovery

    ,

    🔧Part of the DBA-Tools Project, copy/paste SQL Server scripts and health checks. Backup and recovery is the one area of SQL Server administration where “probably fine” isn’t good enough, a backup you haven’t verified restores is a belief, not a backup. Nine scripts across this site cover the whole lifecycle: what recovery model each database…

  • SQL Server Recovery Models Explained

    Understanding SQL Server Recovery Models is fundamental to backup strategy, restore capability, and transaction log management. A recovery model determines two things: Get it wrong and you either lose restore precision or end up chasing log growth incidents. Every database runs under one of three models: Start by checking what you’re running: What Recovery Model…

  • Backing Up a SQL Server Database with Encryption

    Encrypted backups are no longer optional in most environments. If backups leave the server, land on shared storage, or are retained long-term, unencrypted backups are a data leak waiting to happen. SQL Server has supported native backup encryption since SQL Server 2012, but the mechanics still catch DBAs out. usually during a restore, not a…

  • How to Restore a Database in SQL Server

    Restoring a database in SQL Server is a core DBA task. Whether you’re responding to an incident, performing disaster recovery testing, migrating data, or rebuilding an environment, restores need to be predictable, repeatable, and verifiable. This post walks through restoring a database using both T-SQL and SQL Server Management Studio, along with the checks that…

  • Get Last Database Restore Date and Time in SQL Server

    Knowing when a database was last restored is useful during incident response, audits, and general environment validation. This is not about backup schedules or restore progress.It is a simple historical check that answers one question: When was this database last restored? This post shows a reliable way to retrieve the most recent restore date and…