2015-09

The Subtleties of COPY_ONLY Backups

Recently I have been looking at the COPY_ONLY feature for taking backups of a database. COPY_ONLY was introduced in SQL Server 2005, and allows you to take ad-hoc backups of either the log or a full backup without breaking the backup chain for differential backups. The COPY_ONLY backup is not part of the restore log: so when restoring from a full backup you can ignore it. The same here can also be said for log COPY_ONLY backups; it’s an ad-hoc backup that does not alter the transaction log at all; there’s no clearing down of the log.

2015-09-21

2015-08

Get Last Backup Date of Database

I’ve been working hard on my backup/restore skills lately, getting to grips with the fundamentals and making sure that I understand backup/restore best practices and running examples to make sure I’m ready in the event of a disaster. It’s a cliche to say that you don’t want to be doing this in a real life disaster when everyone is huddled around your desk, but it’s true! Tasks like tail log backups, a type of backup that backs up the log file even if it is offline or damaged, is something that you may need to run in some scenarios.

2015-08-18